Mo Yan: Works shrouded in the light of inspiration

More than thirty years ago, when I first learned to write, in order to find inspiration, I used to go out late at night many times, along the riverbank, facing the moonlight, and walking forward until the golden rooster announced.

When I was a teenager, I was very timid, and I did not dare to go out at night, nor did I dare to drill into the crop field alone during the day. Other children can cut a lot of grass at home, but I will never be able to cut the basket. My mother knew that I was timid and had asked me many times: What are you afraid of? I said I didn't know what to be afraid of, but I was just afraid. When I walk alone, I always feel that something is following me behind. When I arrived alone on the edge of the crop field, I always felt that something would come out at any moment. When I passed by the big trees, I always felt that something would suddenly jump off the big trees. When I passed the grave, I always felt that something would jump out of it. I saw the whirlpool in the river, and I always felt that there was something strange hidden in the whirlpool... I told my mother that I really didn't know what to be afraid of, but I was afraid. Mother said: In the world, everything is afraid of people! Poisonous snakes and beasts are afraid of people, and demons and ghosts are also afraid of people. Therefore, there is nothing to be afraid of. I believe my mother was right, but I was still afraid. Later, when I became a soldier, I stood guard at night with a submachine gun in my arms, and there were thirty bullets in the magazine, but I was still afraid. I stood alone in the sentry position, always feeling cold at the back of my neck, as if someone was blowing air at my neck. I jerked back, but there was nothing.

Because of literature, my courage finally grew. One year when I was on vacation at home, I slept until midnight and saw the moonlight coming in through the window ledge. I got dressed and quietly walked out of the house, along the alley, up the embankment. When the moon is shining, the village is quiet, the river is shining with silver, and everything is silent. I walked out of the village and into the fields. On the left is the river, and on the right are patches of corn and sorghum. All the people were sleeping, and I was the only one awake. I suddenly felt a great bargain. I felt that this vast field, this lush crop, including this vast sky and the brilliant moon were all for me. I feel great. I know that my lonely journey of the moon and night is for literature, I know that a literary scholar should be an unusual person, I know that many literary scholars have done things that ordinary people dare not do or are unwilling to do, and I feel that my lonely travel of the moon and night has distanced me from ordinary people, of course, in the eyes of ordinary people, this is very absurd and ridiculous.

I looked up at the moon, looked down at the grass, and listened to the river. I drilled into the sorghum fields to listen to the sound of sorghum growing. I lay on the ground, feeling the earth trembling, smelling the earth. I felt a great gain, but I didn't know what I had gained.

I went out in the middle of the night several times in a row, and came home at dawn, and of course my parents and wife knew, but they never asked me anything. Only once, I heard my mother tell my wife that he had been timid since he was a child, and he did not dare to go out as soon as it was dark, and now he was bold.

I have answered many times the question of what the role of literature is, but I have never remembered my mother's words, and now that I suddenly remember it, I will quickly say: If someone asks me again what the function of literature is, I will answer him: Literature makes people bold.

The real boldness is actually not to kill people without blinking, in fact, it is not to regard death as a homecoming, in fact, it is not to change the color of the face and not to beat when stealing the national treasury, but a spirit of insisting on independent thinking, not following the current, not being swayed by public opinion, and daring to speak and do things under the guidance of conscience.

On those moonlit nights, I naturally didn't find any inspiration, but I experienced what it was like to find inspiration. Of course, everything I felt on those moonlit nights became the basis of my inspiration.

The first time I felt inspiration came in the winter of 1984 when I was writing Transparent Carrots. At that time, I was studying at the People's Liberation Army Academy of Arts. One morning, before the wake-up call sounded, I saw a large turnip field with a grass shed in the middle of the radish field. The red sun is rising, and the heavens and the earth are brilliant. From where the sun rises, a plump woman dressed in red comes over, holding a harpoon in her hand, and on the harpoon is a sparkling carrot that seems to be shining...

This dream made me feel very excited. I sat down and wrote the book, and it took only a week to write the first draft. Of course, just one dream is not a novel. Of course, such dreams do not arise out of thin air. It has to do with my past life, and it has to do with my life at the time. This dream awakened my memory, I remembered the experience of being an apprentice to the blacksmith master on the bridge construction site as a teenager, and I remembered the painful past of being caught in front of the masses because I pulled out a carrot from the production team.

Shortly after writing Transparent Carrots, I read a passage from Yasunari Kawabata's novel Snow Country: "A stout black Akita dog squatted on a stepping stone by the edge of the pool, licking hot water for a long time. Immediately a vivid picture appeared in front of my eyes: the streets were snowy, the waterholes on the side of the road were steaming, and the big black dog stuck out its red tongue and licked the hot water "croaking". This passage is not only a picture, but also a melody, a key, a narrative angle, the beginning of a novel. I immediately remembered the story of my Gaomi Northeast Township, so I wrote: "Gaomi Northeast Township is native to the white, docile big dog, after several generations, it is difficult to see a purebred horse again." This is the beginning of my most famous short story, The White Dog Swing. The opening few sentences determine the tone of the whole novel, and the next writing is like water flowing, as if everything has been written long ago, just I can record it.

In fact, there has never been a "white tame big dog" in Takami Tohoku Township, which is the product of inspiration from Yasunari Kawabata's black dog.

During that time, I often went to the bookstore to buy books. Some of them are poorly written, but I bought them anyway. My idea is that no matter how poorly written a book is, you can always find a good sentence, and a good sentence is likely to trigger inspiration and produce a novel.

I have also taken inspiration from newspaper news, such as the novel "The Song of Garlic in Heaven", which benefited from real events in a county in Shandong Province, and the original inspiration for the novella "Red Locust" was a false news written by a friend of mine.

I've also taken inspiration from incidents I encountered, such as when I saw a woman breastfeeding twins in a subway station, which led to the idea for the novel "Fat Buttocks". I saw six reincarnations on the mural in the temple, which gave rise to the thematic structure of the novel "Life and Death Fatigue".

The ways to get inspired are varied, vary from person to person, and are encounterable but not soughtable. It was basically foolishness to get up in the middle of the night like I did in the middle of the night to find inspiration— something that is still laughed at in my hometown. It is said that a young man who aspired to write followed my example, got up in the middle of the night to find inspiration, and was almost caught as a thief by the night watchman—this in itself constitutes a novel.

Inspiration does exist, but no matter how inspiration is obtained, it takes a lot of work and a lot of material to become a work.

Inspiration does not only appear in the conceptual stage of the work, but also in the process of writing, and the inspiration in this writing process is even more important. A beautiful sentence, a vivid dialogue, a deep detail, all without the need for inspiration to shine.

A good work must be a work shrouded in the light of inspiration. And a mediocre work is a work that lacks inspiration. When we pray for inspiration to strike, we must go deep into our lives. We hope that inspiration will come frequently, so we must read more books and newspapers. We want to be inspired, just like to prevent obesity: "keep your mouth shut, open your legs", in this sense, it is also a good way to run in the field in the middle of the night.