The Surging News reporter Luo Xin
On January 21, 2022, the famous writer Zhang Jie died of illness in the United States at the age of 85.
As one of the important writers in China since the new era, Zhang Jie has won almost all national literary awards, and is also the only writer in China who has twice won the Mao Dun Literature Award. It was not until February 7 that the news of Zhang Jie's death reached China. Many people in the literary circle feel sudden and sad, and so does the writer Wang Anyi.
Zhang Jie photographed in 2005 People's Visual Data Map
Wang Anyi and Zhang Jie are peers who appreciate each other. Zhang Jie once publicly expressed her liking for Wang Anyi in an interview: "I appreciate her (Wang Anyi's) personality and literature. She has always worked hard, and recently read one of her short stories, "The Alcoholic", which is really well written. We were far apart and occasionally had phone calls. I often feel that there is a like-minded person who walks with you and treats literature as a 'thing'. ”
People familiar with Zhang Jie know how rare the four words of "like-mindedness" are for Zhang Jie.
"I didn't expect her to go so fast, I always felt that she was very young and good looking. She kept herself and didn't give up on herself. On the evening of February 7, Wang Anyi talked to the surging news reporter about Zhang Jie, the person who was like a "thorny rose", "Do you know that she once influenced us so strongly?" ”
"She writes about unsung emotions and things"
In Wang Anyi's view, Zhang Jie is a very important writer in the literature of the new era. If you start from 1978 and 1979, Zhang Jie has long stood on the stage of literature in the new period, and in a very beautiful posture. At that time, there was no novel adaptation of the TV series, but Zhang Jie already had a novel changed into a TV series, called "There is a Youth", Wang Anyi still remembers, it is Zhang Tielin and Fang Shu starring. This drama is rarely mentioned today, but the data shows that it is the first single TV series filmed by CCTV.
Stills from "There's a Youth."
"Of course, she also wrote a lot of works of the Scar Literature Movement, but I think one of her most important works at that time was "Picking The Ear of Wheat", which had a very great personal impact on me. We know that Chinese literature has an epic responsibility, or a sense of historical mission, and we also have a desire to write epic novels, and Zhang Jie just took a completely different path, which can also be said to be a more essential path of literature - writing unsung emotions and things. ”
Wang Anyi said that "Picking Wheat" is particularly inspiring for herself, and she seems to suddenly understand that literature is like this, "Our creation has no individual for a long time, but in that period, "Picking Wheat" brought up the individuality at once. ”
On the other hand, Wang Anyi also believes that Zhang Jie's works are works that really have a sense of female consciousness in Chinese literature. "I don't know if she'll be disgusted by my naming, but I think she's really, really unique. I watched her "Ark" and "Tangram", including the later long story "No Words". She is not called 'isms', we often say 'feminism', but she is not under the historical name of 'isms', she still starts from the individual, so I think she really has a conscious female awakening consciousness. If we are in line, I think the earliest person to have this kind of consciousness is Ding Ling, but in the literature of the new period, Zhang Jie must be the first person. ”
"Naked son, this evaluation is very accurate"
In the circle of friends on February 7, many people remembered Zhang Jie when they quoted her famous work "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten", but in fact, in the "Zhang Jie Anthology" published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 2012, Zhang Jie did not put "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten" into it. The preface to the anthology also reads: "The publication of the anthology gave me a chance to clean up... If anyone reads my words in the future, please help me fulfill this wish — don't read the words that I have cleaned up that are not worth preserving..."
In a 2013 interview, Zhang Jie also mentioned: "When the People's Literature Publishing House published my anthology last year, I deleted "Love, Cannot Be Forgotten" and three short stories that won the National Outstanding Short Story Award, and did not include it in my collection. ”
The Collected Works of Zhang Jie published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 2012
In this regard, Wang An recalled that Zhang Jie may have drawn a boundary for his own creation. "The boundary may be a little sharper at times, but her intentions, I think I can understand. It's also very much like what she would do, right? ”
Sometimes, Wang Anyi also felt that Zhang Jie was too sharp, but even so, there was no posture in that sharpness, but the most real feelings and thoughts. "She is a very real person, not a little false, she is very real about her feelings, and her expression of others is not pretentious at all." Wang An recalled that his mother Ru Zhijuan had the simplest evaluation of Zhang Jie- "naked son", "this evaluation is very accurate." ”
In addition to "There Is a Youth", Zhang Jie's long story "The Person Who Hurt Me the Most In the World Went" was later adapted into a movie. Wang Anyi said: "If you look at it as true information, you will feel that this person (Zhang Jie) really can't live with yourself. However, this 'can't go', once it becomes aesthetic, you can't know it so simply. ”
Poster for "The Man Who Hurt Me The Most In the World Went"
"Always fantasizing about whether you will touch her all at once"
In 1988, Wang Anyi and Zhang Jie went to Germany to participate in the Hamburg Art Festival, and there was a lot of time spent together. Later, When Wang Anyi went to Beijing, he would go to see Zhang Jie, and Zhang Jie came to Shanghai, and the two were often together.
"It's a little bit of a pity." Wang Anyi recalled that in 2016, she was stationed at New York University in the United States, and Zhang Jie had also moved to New York, but one was in the upper city, one in the lower city, And Zhang Jie was not very willing to come out to meet people, "She lived close to Columbia, I sometimes went to the upper city, I always fantasized about whether I would meet her at once, but unfortunately, I never met her." Li Tuo and her were separated by a road, and I asked Li Tuo if he had encountered them in the supermarket for several years, and the results were not. ”
Maybe she didn't want people to see her imperfections. She is a very perfection-seeking person. It's like she had a very brilliant period, wrote a lot of good works, and then didn't write anymore. I wondered, isn't she happy enough with what she wrote? It's hard to guess her mood. ”
Zhang Jie People's Vision Data Map
In October 2014, at the age of 77, Zhang Jie held her solo oil painting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Literature in Beijing. This was her first oil painting exhibition in Beijing, but she said it was her "farewell performance" – "Zhang Jie said goodbye!" ”
Wang Anyi did not go to the scene, but looked through the album brought back by his friend. "Now that I think about it, it's really like a farewell, a special one. So I say she's perfectionist and she's going to have a goodbye. This exhibition gave me the impression of a gorgeous turn and farewell. ”
Zhang Jie's paintings
Thinking of this, Wang Anyi was particularly emotional. "You know that time is passing too quickly now, she is actually very close to us, but now a lot of people don't know her." Time is fast, the pace is fast, the page is fast, I think it is not good, we have cut off the tradition. You know, she used to influence those of us so strongly. ”
"It's a pity, but she may have kept it perfect." Wang Anyi told the surging news reporter, "Before the advent of the era of marketization, she suddenly braked. ”
Zhang Jie's oil painting
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Shi Gong