Shen Congwen took the stage to teach for the first time, and many students came to visit. He looked up, saw the black pressure on a piece of human head, his heart was suddenly shocked, and he stood stupidly for nearly ten minutes before he opened his mouth, and the content of the lesson scheduled for one hour was also finished in the busy for more than ten minutes, and he fell into embarrassment again. In desperation, Shen picked up the chalk and wrote on the blackboard: "The first time I went to class, I saw many of you, and I was afraid." ”
After class, the students talked about it one after another: "A person like Shen Congwen can't even say a word in half an hour." After hearing this, Hu Shi smiled and said: "I can't speak in class, and the students don't bombard him, this is success." ”
Shen Congwen's novels are well written and influential in the world, almost winning the Nobel Prize, but his teaching skills are very general. He is also self-aware, and at the beginning of each class he will say: My lectures are not wonderful, you have to sleep, I have no objection, but please do not snore, so as not to affect others. When he said it so modestly, he won the lottery. Wang Zengqi later commented that Mr. Shen's class was "unsystematic", the Xiangxi accent was very heavy, the voice was low, and some students often did not know what they listened to after listening to a class.
Shen Congwen fell in love with his female student Zhang Zhaohe, because he was so nervous about words, he launched a love letter offensive, the letter was written almost once a day, Zhang Zhaohe was overwhelmed, so he took more than three hundred love letters written by Shen to her to go to the principal Hu Shi, showed the letter to Hu Shi, and said: "The teacher always treats me like this." Hu Shi sighed and said, "He loves you very stubbornly." Zhang immediately replied, "I am very stubborn not to love him." Hu Shi didn't think so after listening, and said happily: "Shen Congwen is a talent, I will help you talk to your father, be a matchmaker." ”
Zhang Zhaohe, who was arrogant and arrogant, compiled the suitors as "Frog No. 1", "Frog No. 2", and "Frog No. 3". Zhang Zhaohe's second sister Zhang Yunhe teased her: "Shen Congwen can only be ranked as 'toad number thirteen'. Shen Congwen said: "Hunting is to fight lions, abstract to pick stars in the sky, and pursue beautiful women." ”
Zhang Zhaohe graduated and returned to his hometown in Suzhou. Shen wrote to him: "If Dad agrees, let me know as soon as possible and let me, a countryman, have a cup of sweet bar." After Zhang's father agreed, Zhang Zhaohe sent a telegram to Shen: "The countrymen have a cup of sweet bar." Shen Congwen later said: "I have walked on bridges in many places, seen clouds many times, and drunk many kinds of wine, but I have only loved one person of the right and best age." ”
In 1948, Shen Congwen was characterized by Guo Moruo as a "pink writer", and being labeled with such a hat was almost a devastating blow. At the beginning of the following year, Peiping was liberated, but Shen Congwen decided to die. The means he took were to insert his finger directly into the wire plug and try to electrocute himself, only to be discovered by the eldest son and kicked open without dying.
But what Shen Congwen didn't know was that even without his son's obstruction at that time, his way of electrocuting himself would probably not work. It is reasonable to say that people tend to rethink the value of life and think about another way other than death after they fail to seek death, but Shen Congwen obviously has a dead will.
On March 28, not long after, he locked himself in his bedroom while his family was not there, and did what he thought was safer: he cut his throat with a razor, cut his wrist, and drank a large cup of kerosene. But this time, due to being discovered by his wife Zhang Zhaohe in time, he failed again.
Human life is often not within one's control, even death, as the old saying goes, "You can't die in a river that drowns in a well." Neither time he could die, and it was shen Congwen's fate. On the night of May 30 of that year, everything fell silent. Shen Congwen listened to the snoring of the children sleeping after the rain, sat down at his desk and wrote: I am still at the desk, but the world has changed, and everything has lost its original meaning... Cut off from all happiness, and not knowing what sorrow is, only dazed and opposite to the world.
Since then, Shen Congwen has hardly lifted the pen in his hand and quit writing novels for twenty-five years like quitting drug addiction. In the following thirty years, although he was also hand-picked once on Jinggangshan, lived for a few months, and tried to write some main theme articles, he eventually abandoned his pen and destroyed all the drafts he wrote.
Taking 1949 as the demarcation, Shen Congwen, who wrote before, was one person, and it was another person who abandoned the pen later. The Xiangxi he is most keen to write, there is a folk custom of exorcising corpses, Shen Congwen, who can no longer mention the pen, in fact, mourning is greater than death, and living is almost like driving away corpses.
