Chen Zhongzhong said of his reading, "Almost all reading is just reading with interest, just to add knowledge, broaden horizons, and see works of various artistic styles." For a writer, reading is both a life interest and a preparation for creation. It is difficult to fully understand a writer's reading situation, because his reading range in his life may be so wide that it is impossible to grasp it accurately. However, by sorting out the reading that this writer has had a special influence on, we can see how cultural traditions, literary traditions, and the cultural background and atmosphere of the times have a major impact on a writer, and we can explore some spiritual sources and contexts of this writer.
Chen Zhongzhong grew up in the baqiao countryside of his hometown of Xi'an, and also attended primary and secondary schools in the countryside, and he has a particularly profound experience and feeling for rural life. A person's interest in reading is closely related to his or her life experience and life experience. In the early years, due to the limitations of the background of the times, cultural vision and the scope of life, chen Zhongzhong chose to read and accept novels that described rural life at that time, in addition to the texts of school.
Liu Qing
Zhao Shuli, Liu Shaotang, Liu Qing, Wang Wenshi, etc., are all writers he likes. Modern writers have also read some works, from high school to graduate home, he has read Mao Dun's "Midnight", "Eclipse", Ba Jin's "Home", "Fog", "Rain", "Electricity", Guo Moruo's "Boyhood", and Li Guangtian's prose collection.
Ba jin
It is worth noting that Chen Zhongzhong's early reading was mainly based on novels, and he rarely mentioned prose, poetry and drama, let alone literary theory, literary criticism, and books on history, philosophy, and culture. Poetry and prose, or simply poetry, in a sense, belong more to the elegance of intellectual writers. Chen's literary interest is not here. From the very beginning, he seems to have subconsciously positioned himself as a novelist.
Chen Zhongzhong's literary reading in his early years shaped his literary ideals, as well as his cultural psychology and aesthetic psychology. His cultural psychology and aesthetic psychology eventually condensed into one point, that is, the countryside - rural life and rural complex. In July 1982, Chen Zhongzhong's first book and first collection of short stories was titled "The Countryside".
Chen Zhongzhong's attention to world literature began as a teenager, and in the summer of 1958, Chen Zhongzhong's first foreign novel was Sholokhov's "Quiet Don River". It is also a novel related to the vernacular. Sholokhov and his Don Cossack country novels had an extremely profound influence on Chen's literary thinking and temperament.
Sholokhov
Entering the youth, in 1962, Chen Zhongzhong's college entrance examination fell to Sun Shan and returned to his hometown to work as a rural teacher. When he decided to pursue literary creation as an ideal, he borrowed another novel by Sholokhov from the library of the Baqiao District Cultural Center, "The Reclaimed Virgin Land". Chen Zhongzhong felt a touchable affinity in this work about the story of the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union, and some of the plots often made him associate with the people and things in the agricultural cooperatives in which he was located, imagining that if the names of the characters in the work were replaced by Chinese names, it seemed that they could be regarded as novels about China's agricultural cooperatives.
Thus Chen's faithful reading horizons moved from the Soviet Union to Western Europe: France, Spain, England. Purposeless reading has a potential and profound impact on his aesthetic judgment and artistic thinking.
In the middle of the Cultural Revolution, Chen Zhongzhong was seconded to the commune to help and met a geography teacher in junior high school. The teacher had been promoted to principal of the only secondary school in their commune, but was criticized. The commune is now reviving its long-paralyzed grassroots party branch, and the teacher has been seconded to the commune to help with the work. In small talk, the former principal said he had not been reused before coming here, working as a librarian at the school. Hearing this, Chen Zhongzhong's heart moved, and he offered to borrow some books to read. The teacher said that the school's books had long been taken out by the students. Chen Zhongzhong was not reconciled, saying that there was always a little left, right? The teacher said dismissively that the stolen remaining books were piled up in the corner of the library. Chen Zhongzhong persuaded the teacher to quietly enter the campus on a bicycle at night, open the iron lock of the library, and did not dare to turn on the electric lamp, illuminate it with a flashlight prepared in advance, and find the pile of books in the corner that had mostly been torn off the book cover. The result was overjoyed, chen Zhongzhong actually picked out "Les Misérables", "Blood and Sand", "Nameless Jude" and other world famous books. He packed the books into a plastic bag prepared in advance with urea, took them out, tied them to the back rack of his bicycle, and rode out of the school gate as if he had been a thief. The teacher repeatedly told him that he must not let anyone see these books. Chen Zhongzhong swore that even if he was accidentally discovered and exposed by anyone, he would never reveal the true origin of the book, and he would not cause trouble for the teacher if he was killed.
Hugo
Chen Zhongzhong later recalled that after a busy day, he washed his feet at night and inserted the door button before he dared to take out a translated novel with a "Maoxuan" skin from the locked drawer and enter the quietest and most adventurous reading. From time to time, there was a quarrel in the courtyard caused by cadres playing poker for a foul card. The best reading is when you go to the countryside to live in a peasant's house. At that time, there was no TV, and the landlord's family went to bed after dinner. Snoring in the front and back windows, he enters and swims unguarded in the world of fiction. It was in this kind of non-utilitarian and adventurous reading that he finished reading the world famous works such as "Les Misérables", "Blood and Sand", and "Nameless Jude".
At this stage of reading, Chen Zhongzhong believes that in his literary career, "it can really be called reading in the sense of pure appreciation.". Because of the reading before and after, for him at least the professional purpose of creating "borrowing". Chen Zhongzhong said that since the "Cultural Revolution", he has no longer dreamed of being a writer, and in the past four or five years, he has not written any articles related to literature. When reading these world famous works, it did not induce his desire to write, he just liked to read. When he read these novels, which were then denounced as "feudal funds and repair black goods", his ears were filled with quotations from Chairman Mao and model opera singing sections, and the loudspeakers on the village branches poured red notes into the fields and villages from morning to night.
Chen Zhongzhong said that he could not judge the prospects for the development of Chinese proletarian literature and art represented by the "model play", he only thought from the level of common sense, from his own reading experience, "Les Misérables", "Blood and Sand", "Nameless Jude" and other works, all shouted for the laborers, and were liked by the European proletariat and the poor, the key is that these works and his emotions "have been completely integrated" .
The influence of Kochetov and other Soviet writers on Chen Zhongzhong gave Chen Zhongzhong a deep reading experience in the relationship between literature and reality and how literature reflected reality, and triggered a series of reflections. Several huge changes in Kochetov's creation surprised Chen Zhongzhong even more, which made him further think about the responsibility and mission of a writer, why, what to write, how to write, and so on.
In the spring of 1975, after Chen Zhongzhong went to the Western Film Studio for adapting the script, an amateur author revealed to him that there were several "internal reference" novels in the library of the Western Film Factory for the reading and reference of senior leading cadres, and it was said that these novels exposed the inside story of "Soviet revisionism." After applying, Chen Zhongzhong was approved by the relevant leaders as a business reference for writing the script, and made an exception to read the reference book of "high cadres".
The novel that shocked and excited Chen Zhongzhong after reading it was "The Secretary of the State Party Committee", written by Kochetov. This novel writes about two secretaries of the CPSU's state party committees, one seeking truth from facts and doing the construction and development work of a state, and the other deceiving and concealing and falsely reporting achievements and engaging in exaggeration. The former is constantly frustrated, the latter is constantly recognized and promoted, and the end is that the water is lost, the latter is punished, and the former is justified.
In 1975, the night was still thick, but people were gradually waking up. In Chen Zhongzhong's view, this should be a symptom of the end of the extremely "Left" line in the past decade. At this time, Chen Zhongzhong was also talking privately with several friends about "The Secretary of the State Party Committee". In Chen Zhongzhong's view, if the names of the characters in this Soviet novel are replaced by the names of Chinese, and the collective farms are replaced by people's communes or production teams, the reader will feel that these things are happening all around us.
His eyes opened, and Chen's interest in reading shifted from his works to the writers themselves. He found that several twists in Kochetov's creative process seemed to be more instructive for him. He borrowed two of Kochetov's novels, "The Jurbin Family" and "The Brothers of Yersov", both translated and published before the Cultural Revolution. From the perspective of the urban family, these two works depict the heroic spirit of industrial workers in socialist labor. In the 1960s, this writer, who was well-known in the Soviet Union and China for writing about the heroes of the period of peaceful construction, turned his pen sharp and changed his perspective to reveal the speculators in the organs of the CPSU regime, and his long works such as "Secretary of the State Party Committee" became a reference specimen for Chinese "high cadres" to understand the qualitative changes of the shady regime in the "Soviet revisionist" society. Why did Kochetov take such a turn? In Chen Zhongzhong's view, this is obviously not a change caused by the pursuit of art form, but a change in the writer's thinking. What contributed to this change and shift of perspective in Kochetov, Chen Zhongzhong did not find any reference materials at that time, nor did he find an answer. The judgment he could make at the time was that it required both strong thought penetration and the courage of a thinker.
One is thought, the other is courage. These two points greatly inspired Chen Zhongzhong.
In the early 1980s, Kochetov's works reappeared on the shelves of Xinhua Bookstore, including "Secretary of the State Party Committee", which was once used as an internal reference for "high cadres". When Chen Zhongzhong bought this book, he had a nameless sigh, but in six or seven years, the world has undergone such a huge change. Soon I saw Kochetov's "What Do You Really Want", which is Kochetov's thinking and questioning in the face of reality, sharp and severe, shocking. The title "What the Hell Do You Want" also quickly spread in China and was widely used. Later, he bought Kochetov's "Falling Horns", and Kochetov's changes in this book once again surprised Chen Zhongzhong. Chen Zhongzhong found that whether it was thought or art form, the style of Kochetov that he was once familiar with was almost impossible to find, and the novel was written a little cryptically, a little symbolically, more of a layer of fog, almost severing the inheritance and connection with his previous works. In the face of all these great changes in thought and art, Chen Zhongzhong thought, Kochetov himself "what exactly do you want"? Chen Zhongzhong said that although he did not find the exact answer, he clearly saw the trajectory of a writer's ideological, emotional and artistic exploration, and Kochetov changed from a clear and emotional praise of heroes in his early stance to a harsh criticism and exposure of hypocrisy and ugliness in life, to a severe question to the whole society and the crowd - "what do you really want", and finally developed into the obscure "Falling Corner". All these changes are undoubtedly changes in the writer's thoughts and emotions, but what is contributing to this change? Chen Zhongzhong said his intuition was that from enthusiastic and thoughtful sharpness to obscurity, Kochetov may be too tired, and perhaps there is some kind of deep disappointment.
In the early 1980s, as small as the courtyard of the Shaanxi Writers Association, there was a burst of Soviet literary fever. At that time, Sino-Soviet relations were thawed, and Soviet literature was translated in large quantities. The domestic editor published two magazines specializing in the translation of Soviet literature, Soviet Literature and Russian-Soviet Literature, which Chen Zhongzhong subscribed to for many years until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through these two magazines and reading the works of Soviet writers, Chen Zhongzhong became acquainted with many Soviet writers. At this time, he lived in his hometown in the countryside, went to the Writers' Association for meetings or errands, and often rested in the house of Wang Guansheng, the editor and writer of "Yanhe". Lu Yao is also a regular visitor in this single house. Their topics always focused on the discussion of Soviet writers and the reading experience of their works. Aitmatov, Shukshin, Vasiliev, the Soviet Union and China, they and we ... Regarding these writers and issues, Chen Zhongzhong, Lu Yao and other writers exchanged reading feelings with each other, complemented each other, inspired each other, and talked with each other. Chen Zhongzhong believes that the harvest from this kind of mutual exchange between writers and friends is better than those seminars of the Eight Classics. Chen Zhongzhong was impressed that when everyone talked about excitement, Wang Guansheng would open the standing cabinet with a wooden fan and take out the treasured Nescafe coffee, which was the rarest and most expensive and fashionable drink at that time, and reward each person with a cup. In the smoke-filled hut, the rich aroma of coffee also floats out, and it is happy.
This article is excerpted from The Biography of Chen Zhongzhong, People's Literature Publishing House
▌ Related reading Click on the title below to read
Chen Zhongzhong is one of the most outstanding writers of contemporary China, he regards writing as life, defends the literary spirit throughout his life, looks for his own sentences, and makes important contributions to the development of contemporary literature. His "White Deer Plain" won the Fourth Mao Dun Literature Award, using a majestic epic of the 50 years of changes in the Weihe River Plain to write the national spirit and grasp the pulse of the nation. Xing Xiaoli, the author of this book, has long followed and studied Chen Zhongzhong, and has a deep friendship with Chen Zhongzhong personally. The biography of Chen Zhongzhong, written by him, places Chen Zhongzhong in the time and space of contemporary Chinese social change and interaction with Chinese literature, and uses first-hand information and vivid words to vividly, plumply, truly and three-dimensionally restore Chen Zhongzhong's legendary literary life, showing Chen Zhongzhong's personality charm and demeanor.