If there are any outstanding works of historical fiction in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, the most well-known ones must be Yao Xueyan's "Li Zicheng" and February River's "Sunset Trilogy". The death of the writer February River in 18 years has made the topic of historical novels rise again, and at the same time, the evaluation of different works is also endless, to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two works, it is necessary to involve the character image, artistic characteristics, narrative techniques and other aspects of the work, and the author will try to compare objectively in the text.
1. Greatness is born in suffering, an analysis of the writer's creative background.
February River was originally named Ling Liberation, and his young military experience was the most important part of his life. In his works, he can analyze the reasons for the victory and defeat of the war in detail, and describe the scene of the fight between soldiers and soldiers, on the one hand, from his examination of a large number of historical materials, on the other hand, from the experience of joining the army for many years. The ideological education received in the special historical period also affected his writing style, and February River's creative style has always been known for its popularization and popularization, and it can be clearly seen that his works inherit the style of popularization of literature in the Liberated Areas in the 30s, and under the influence of the serious and traditional literary style of Soviet Russian literature, there is no avant-garde, abstract and other techniques of Western literature.
The completion of the novel "Li Zicheng" is a work condensed after the author experienced the changes of the Cultural Revolution period, reflected on the times and himself, and the current situation of the great changes in rural China in modern times. The writer Yao Xueyu has been a firmly left-wing literary writer since the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, engaged in anti-Japanese work in the base areas, which enabled the author to see the darkness of china's rural areas during the war, and deeply touched the two sides of the character of the peasant class and the current situation of hardship in China's rural areas. Under the creation of such rich life experience, the author's famous works "Poor Half a Cart of Wheat Straw", "The Restoration of Human Nature", "The Long Night" and the historical novel "Li Zicheng" can be seen in the epitome of the Chinese peasant group, and the inheritance of the traditional character created by historical civilization in the peasants.
2. Starting from history, create a plump imperial general.
When creating the character image of "Li Zicheng", Yao Xueyu once said: "There is a basic principle in handling characters, that is, starting from historical life." Looking at the representative figures in "Li Zicheng": Li Zicheng, Chongzheng Emperor, Zhang Xianzhong, Gao Guiying, we see not one by one symbolic emperor ministers, caokou generals, the author extended from historical records in the creation, carried out a rich imagination, but this is by no means a guess, but a reasonable fabrication after examining the social life of the late Ming Dynasty, for example, in the description of the Battle of Nanyuan in Tongguan, Liu Zongmin fell into the pit and swung a knife in the pit to resist the enemy, the description of this paragraph is full of romantic heroism. But it is also feasible in real life, in line with the heroic image of the ancients. When creating the character image, we do not write "supermans" that do not conform to reality, and we have achieved the unity of the typical image and their respective characteristics.
But the character design of "Li Zicheng" is not perfect. If the flaws are there, the author believes that the biggest failure is the protagonist Li Zicheng. Speaking of the creation of this character, we have to talk about the entire creation time of the novel "Li Zicheng", from 1957 to 1999 for a full 42 years, the five-volume novel creation basically spans half of the Chinese contemporary era, and even the publication of the fifth volume of the fourth volume is not even before the author's death. From Li Zicheng's image, it can be clearly seen that the early period was too symbolic of "Tall and Complete", which was a "perfect person" image with almost no shortcomings, and in the fourth volume, after the author realized the shortcomings of this image, the sharp turn of the pen began to expose his dark side, making the reader feel very abrupt, and the shaping of the image also collapsed.
There is no heart to plant flowers and flowers, and there is no heart to plant willows. As supporting characters and villains, Zhang Xianzhong and Chongzhen were very successful. If Li Zicheng is a tall symbolic rebel, Zhang Xianzhong is a character with a contradictory personality, but more plump. His molding is less of the author's artificial fabrication of more authenticity and environmental impact. And Chongzhen received almost the highest evaluation in the whole book, Zhu Youjian's image is not simply the king of the subjugated country, on the contrary, after experiencing the deep palace fighting in childhood, the abandoned government of the predecessors, Zhu Youjian tried hard to rule diligently, vainly trying to revitalize Daming, his image is a complete Ming jun, but the decay of the country and his always stand against the peasants, resulting in the irreparability of the tragedy. The success of this image lies in the fact that the author combines the truth of history with art very well, and there is no subjective and conjuring ugly negative character.
In contrast, February River and Yao Xueyan made almost the same mistakes, in shaping the image of Kangxi Yongzheng Qianlong, the protagonist's aura is too powerful, almost all of them show the emperor's advantages, such as great talent, diligence and love for the people, and for the "black spots" that have occurred in history, such as the literal prison and the peasant uprising, they have adopted the method of diluting or simply not writing. In the plot of the chancellor facing the emperor, in order to maintain the emperor's beloved Ming mastership, except for the villain, the other ministers will not refute the emperor in person, and they are full of admiration for the emperor, which also makes the emperor's character much thinner.
But for the shaping of the "scholarly" class, this novel is successful. The Qing Dynasty intellectuals shaped by February River are different from the traditional scholar class, they are advanced in consciousness, abandoning narrow national stereotypes, focusing on the world, not advocating seclusion and avoidance, but truly "taking the world as their own responsibility". This image also gives the reader a new perspective to think about the essence of the spirit of the scholar in the next five thousand years of Chinese history.
3. Reader first principle, encyclopedic language art.
Yao Xueyu once said that when creating "Li Zicheng", his principle was "opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and relaxing." "Big opening and big closing" refers to the combination of units to build a full set of novels, that is, each volume has several units, and there is a main line between the units that can be connected to each other to form a complete story, and the whole book is a large unit, and the units are independent and echo each other. The small units inside can write Beijing or Sichuan, and can write about the south or saiwai, and through the combination of small units, they show a relatively complete social landscape at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Novels containing a large number of social features, group portraits of characters, and life pictures, such as "Dream of the Red Chamber" in ancient China, and famous encyclopedic novels in the West such as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Anna Karenina". The advantage of the encyclopedic novel is that it has a broad perspective, so the biggest feature of "Li Zicheng" is that the structure is magnificent and meticulous, but at the same time, the shortcomings are also obvious, and the unit structure also weakens the plot of the novel to a certain extent.
"There is tension and relaxation" refers to the use of a relaxed approach in the arrangement of the plot. For example, after the plot of the Shangluo Mountain Song, Yao Xueyu believes that the writing method of one loose and one tight can properly cause the reader to be nervous when reading, which is conducive to grasping the reader's psychology.
In the face of readers, February River is even more straightforward. He wrote on the cover of his autobiographical essay collection February River Language: "Ordinary readers, those who buy books with his hard-earned money, will always be my God, and demanding eternal readers is the expectation of my writings." As a best-selling novel author, February River puts the pandering of readers' interests in the first place, so in terms of narrative techniques, February River is different from Yao Xueyu and adopts a traditional novel narrative method.
The main reason why the status of traditional Chinese novels in the history of ancient literature has not been high is to take the reader's perception as the first, pay attention to the story, which coincides with the purpose of contemporary bestsellers, February River adopts a traditional narrative perspective, simple and clear story lines, and increases readability with a tortuous and tense plot, which can be seen that the author is deeply influenced by "literary popularization". Although this kind of creative method cannot have a grand architectural and broad perspective like Yao Xueyan, it can ensure the clarity of the storyline and the tension of the rhythm, so as to obtain a larger readership.
However, simply pandering to the reader must not last long, so the author is very clever to run through the whole story in line with the spirit and aesthetics of the times that conform to modern cognition, and elevate the main theme of the work.
In discussing the art of language, both February River and Yao Xueyan use a large number of poems, couplets, and songs. Adjusting the atmosphere through poetry and rendering the characteristics of the times also helps to shape the characters to promote the plot. Yao Xueyan is more intelligent in language than February River in paying more attention to the personalization of the character language. For example, when highlighting Zhang Xianzhong's straightforwardness and rudeness, he often calls himself "Li", and never uses idioms or modest titles, and a big vernacular can let readers paint a rude and uncultured, but sincere and straightforward grassroots general in their minds.
4. The contrast of artistic achievements, tragedy and temple power
The historical facts of the late Ming Dynasty doomed historical novels, no matter how fabricated, not to depart from the tone of tragedy. The novel "Li Zicheng" can be said to be a collection of tragic contradictions between Li Zicheng, Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong, and Lu Xiangsheng from different backgrounds under the great tragedy of the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Under the tragic fate that everyone cannot escape, the tragedy of the times is reflected, the contradiction of nations, the contradiction of classes, the conflict between ideals and reality... Together, they form a magnificent elegy.
February River's Imperial Trilogy all adopts an almost identical ending pattern, that is, the emperor is dying of old age, leaving behind the empire of Qinghe Haiyan and the merits recorded by history for thousands of years. Compared with the bland ending, February River pays more attention to the process of the novel, especially the depiction of the struggle for power and interests in the court. Through the depiction of the temple plot, the contradictions of different camps are shown, and many characters with different personalities are created, and through these struggles, the veil of Kangqian's prosperity is unveiled, and the contradictions between the officialdom, classes and nationalities during the Qing Dynasty are exposed.
It is difficult to say which of the two works is higher in terms of artistic achievements, the author can only say that the benevolent see the wise and the wise, but it is undeniable that the historical novels of Yao Xueyu and February River still have great literary value and epochal significance for our descendants.