Shen Congwen is one of the giants filmed in the second season of "One Hundred Years of Masters". Shen Congwen died in 1988, and 2022 marks the 34th anniversary of his death.
Shen Congwen (1902-1988), a native of Fenghuang County, Hunan. He is a famous Chinese writer and researcher of historical relics. At the age of 14, he joined the army and wandered the Xiangchuan-Qianqian border area. In 1924, he began to write literature. From 1931 to 1933, he taught at Qingdao University, and after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, he taught at southwest United University. In 1946, he returned to Peking University to teach. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he worked at the China Museum of History and the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, mainly engaged in the research of ancient Chinese history and cultural relics. Shen Congwen's novels are mainly based on life in western Hunan or urban life, and have romantic characteristics. His representative works include "Border City", "Long River", "Autobiography of Congwen" and so on. In his later years, he wrote a monograph, "Research on Ancient Chinese Costumes", which filled a gap in the history of Chinese material culture.
Thirty-four years ago today, on May 10, 1988, Shen Congwen, the "last romantic" in the history of modern literature, bid us farewell forever.
Shen Congwen in his later years
This inexhaustible name, under this name, the endless reverie of "Border City", Cuicui, Cha Tong, Xiangxi, Phoenix... Constitutes the first imagination of generations of pastoral songs and the beauty of human nature.
Why does Shen Congwen, a Chinese writer who is regarded as "the closest to the Nobel Prize in Literature", make us remember and remember it to this day?
01
"North Drift Youth" Shen Congwen
"If you are fortunate enough to live in Paris when you are young, paris will be with you wherever you spend the rest of your life; for Paris is a feast of flow." Many years later, Hemingway, who became famous all over the world, summed up his dream years in Paris.
Like every young man from the French provinces yearns for Paris, literary and artistic youth aspire to live in their own capital when they are young, to study, to travel, to gain insight – and, more ideally, to earn fame and a place there.
Shen Congwen, a literary youth in his early twenties, with such a simple wish, rushed from the distant West of Hunan to Beiping.
In 1923, Shen Congwen, who went to Beiping, began to break into the literary world
In Yu Dafu's "Public Letter to a Literary Youth", we can see Shen Cong's embarrassing situation in the early days of Wenbei drift: in the first two years of Beiping, Shen Congwen, who repeatedly failed to fail the university, was forced to live in a cramped small room near Peking University. He wrote diligently, and his submissions flew out like snowflakes, but their whereabouts were unknown.
In poverty and confusion, he picked up a pen and wrote to Uddhav for help: "I hope to be a servant in front of mr. Eu. I just have to be born! I'm satisfied no matter how I live! I am willing to use my hands and brain to work all day in exchange for a low daily living expenses. I wish... I asked my husband to find a way of life for me. ”
Yu Dafu (first from left), a modern writer and one of the founders of the New Literary Group "Creation Society"
Uddhav's reply was direct and "merciless":
"A literary young man like you, with a long white face and no one to rely on, even if he eats bread and tears and diligently lives under the university window for five or six years, will it suddenly rain in the sky the day you get your graduation diploma?"
Fortunately, the direction of fate is always a peak and a turn - shortly after receiving Yu Dafu's reply, Shen Congwen's article was finally published for the first time in the Morning Post Supplement.
It was an ambitious start. The former no-name pawn finally stepped into the circle of literati in Beijing that he dreamed of.
Shen Congwen, who had just tried to cry, was immersed in great joy. At that time, he could not imagine that his appearance would completely rewrite the history of modern Chinese literature.
02
The Last Romantic School: "The Believer Is Saved" about Love
In the 20th century Chinese novella 100, Shen Congwen's novella "Border City" ranked second, second only to Lu Xun's "Scream".
"Bordertown" is based on the film of the same name
For Chinese living in the city, Shen Congwen's Xiangxi world is our first imagination of pastoral and pastoral local life. Many readers say that the reason why they can't help but re-read "Border City" every once in a while is because this novel can give readers a kind of "belief" born from the heart--believing that there is real purity and purity in human nature, and believing that beautiful emotions are the things that people should cherish most.
Needless to say, in the wave of literature in the 20th century, which was dominated by denunciation of darkness and accusations of injustice, Shen Congwen was an out-and-out "outlier". "Shen Congwen's novel material is very fresh, just like the fruits taken from the countryside have not been processed, and they are different from the left-wing novels that reflect rural suffering and class struggle, including the vernacular novels of Lu Xun and others."
Shen Congwen's Former Residence in Phoenix (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
Apparently, Shen Congwen, who joined the army at the age of fourteen and had only a primary school education, was not "ignorant of human suffering" or deliberately avoided —in Shen Congwen's own words, his literary ideal was to build a small Greek temple dedicated to "human nature." He wanted literature to present a more universal, deeper poetry of humanity. A common call to "beauty" and "truth" among peoples in different countries. This is also the greatness of Shen Congwen's works.
"I praise the river in my hometown, precisely because it is isolated from the city, everything is extremely simple, everything is not universal, and the life form and attitude of life are a bit original."
Shen Congwen's student Wang Zengqi recalled that Shen Congwen "was a lover of incorrigible "beauty" and had a religious fanaticism for all things that are beautiful created as a result of human labor. For beauty, he never lacks the surprise and admiration of a young lover..."
Wang Zengqi (left) and his teacher Shen Congwen in Zhongshan Park in 1961
Unlike those writers who "have two faces", Shen Congwen is a writer who truly believes in and practices his literary ideals. In other words, he used his life to argue for the possibility of "human beauty" and "romanticism." One of the most powerful examples is his love affair with Zhang Zhaohe.
He said: "I have walked on bridges in many places, seen clouds many times, drunk many kinds of wine, but I have only loved one person of the right and best age." ”
He said: "We love each other for a lifetime, and a life is too short. ”
Later generations read about His sincerity and tenderness in Shen Congwen's letter to his wife:
"I just look at the water and think of you."
"Sansan (Shen Congwen's affectionate name for Zhang Zhaohe), be obedient, rest assured, I am all right! I'm alone on the boat, looking at what always thinks of you. ”
"I don't suffer from the car, I don't suffer from the cold, I don't suffer from sloppy eating, but I think you are too bitter."
"But if a person has a lover in his heart, his heart is very warm, and his whole body will freeze to ice."
In 1934, Shen Congwen and Zhang Zhaohe were in Beiping
It is often said that "the believer is saved." Shen Congwen firmly believed in "love" all his life, so he also "loved" all his life as he wished. Until death separates the two.
Article source | Triad Life Weekly
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Producer | Hou Xuan
Art Editing | Magical conch
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