Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph
Cao Yu Xinhua News Agency expansion pack
In 1910, a child named Wan Jiabao was born in Tianjin. In 1934, he published the play "Thunderstorm" under the pseudonym of Cao Yu (who had previously published novels under this name), and then created or adapted "Sunrise" (1936), "Wilderness" (1937), "Peking Man" (1941), "Home" (1942) and other excellent plays, which became popular and became classics, with enduring artistic charm, not only translated into English, French, Russian, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Spanish, Arabic and other languages. Moreover, it is often performed in various theaters and chinese and foreign stages. His plays have also been adapted into films, television dramas, dance dramas, operas, Peking operas, local operas and other art forms. The Beijing People's Art Theater alone has created and rehearsed 8 plays by Cao Yu 15 times.
In the history of modern Chinese literature, some well-known works have gradually fallen silent, while Cao Yu's plays have increasingly highlighted their cultural dissemination and influence.
"Writing 'Thunderstorm' is an emotional imperative"
Who is Cao Yu? With his 23-year-old experience of creating his masterpiece "Thunderstorm", he is simply a miracle in the history of art, and with his talent before the age of 35, he has been in a state of "writing" and cannot write since then, he is a particularly worthy case study. Cao Yu once said to Tian Benxiang, who wrote a biography of him, if you want to write about me, you must first write about my bitterness.
Cao Yu's bitterness first came from the family atmosphere: his father Wan Dezun had studied at the Japanese Army Non-Commissioned Officer School, which had produced many Chinese military celebrities, such as Cai Yi, Jiang Baili, Yan Xishan, etc. After Wan Dezun returned to China, he was the secretary of Li Yuanhong, the president of the Republic of China, helplessly, the political situation was turbulent, Li Yuanhong fell, and Wan Dezun, who was less than 40 years old, returned home from leisure, bought a Western-style Western-style building on the banks of the Haihe River in Tianjin, and lived a public life.
Wan Dezun's first wife died young, and Cao Yu's mother married into the Wan family, but died of puerperal fever three days after giving birth to Cao Yu. Career and family are not satisfactory, Wan Dezun gathered a group of down-and-out literati in his home, before people he was depressed, indulging in poetry and wine; after people, he was hysterical and lost his temper. Cao Yu's father and brother both smoked opium, and often when Cao Yu returned home from school, they were still asleep, and the family was as cold and silent as a grave.
Cao Yu's stepmother was the twin sister of his birth mother, and cao yu was treated as if she were her own, and Cao Yu always considered her stepmother to be the birth mother. However, after the tricky maid Liu Ma had a disagreement with her stepmother, she deliberately told Cao Yu: She is not your mother. The moment Cao Yu of childhood knew that his birth mother had passed away, he felt sad in his heart and suddenly felt that he had no place to rely on, and since then, the feeling of loneliness and drifting has haunted him all his life. In his 18-year-old Old Calendar New Year, after the defeat of the family road, his father suddenly died of illness, and the family was welcoming Nafu Chinese New Year's Eve night, but Cao Yu had to report to his relatives and friends for help, and when the doors of those courtyards were knocked on, he was greeted with surprise and disgust, and the cold made him afraid.
Cao Yu said, "I have always been a little melancholy and dark", "My heart always feels like a chaotic cloud of haste and urgency", and his family and what happened around him are engraved in his heart, like a fish in his throat, not spitting out unhappy. He said, "Writing "Thunderstorm" is an urgent need for emotions", "a manifestation of nameless fear", "The birth of "Thunderstorm" is a mood at work, a fermentation of feelings." Cao Yu's writing comes from the expression of life expressed by himself.
Goethe said that art is the product of the infusion of the human spirit, and for the creator, it not only consumes his mind, but also labors his bones. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cao Yu was a professor at the National Drama Specialty in Jiang'an, Sichuan Province, and his wanderings in the fires of war and the painstaking efforts in teaching affected his creation, and his creative talent that rushed like a river was hindered.
When the anti-war drama was in full swing, scripts were needed everywhere, and many people urged him to write them, but he couldn't write them for a while and a half, so he told people that he was thinking and thinking. So much so that later he had a script name, really called "Thinking".
His creative starting point is very high, and he has always been thinking of producing big works and good works. When he wrote the script "Beijinger", he thought about breaking through himself and reaching a new and higher artistic goal. In order to find a quiet place and go all out, he actually hid in a river ship on the edge of the Yangtze River to write. The deck of the three-volt sky was still sweltering, and Cao Yu was shirtless, writing day after day, sweating like rain. The porters on the riverbank saw him working so hard and asked him what he was doing? He said he was writing the script. The porters sighed, always thinking that they were bitter people, and it turned out that writing a script was also so bitter.
During this period, Cao Yu became acquainted with a beautiful and kind lady, Deng Yisheng, who later changed his name to Fang Rui, and every time Cao Yu finished writing a part of the script, he gave it to Fang Rui for copying. Fang Rui copied out the manuscripts with a graceful and dignified fly-headed xiaokai, some of which can still be seen in the Beijing Renyi Theater Museum. This is not only a precious theatrical relic, but also the artistic crystallization of their painstaking efforts in the hard years.
Cao Yu longs for the freedom of the soul, and his characters are the representations of his soul. There is a desire for love and a yearning for freedom in the "most thunderstorm personality" of the prosperous ", and she wants to break through the depressed and dull Zhou Mansion, get rid of the most unbearable passive obedience in the "most orderly family", and find a free sky where she can breathe freely.
After Chen Bailu's family in "Sunrise" fell, he became a social flower of the hotel, relying on selling his young and beautiful body and living a drunken dream and death. It wasn't until her former classmate, her infatuated lover Fang Dasheng, arrived and called out her former name, until she sensed the tragic end of the small things that were insulted and damaged, that she finally understood how ridiculous and childish it was for her to want to find a corner of the big hotel and steal security in the capital world of big fish eating small fish and small fish eating shrimp and rice. She still maintained her soul's desire for freedom when her body was already mired in the mire, and she buried her life with sleeping pills, but she placed her free soul on the grass under the sun.
The tiger in "The Wilderness" is controlled by the idea of revenge, but the destination after revenge is the "place where the gold is paved", although he can't tell where that place is and how to get there. However, in his dream, there will at least be no bullies like King Jiaoyan, and there will be no poisonous sprouts of hatred caused by people deceiving and oppressing each other. There should be a life like the original "Beijinger", no matter whether he has created the social regulations of "dead and alive", "living dead", and "living dead", he has enough strength to break all shackles, love if he wants, hate if he wants, and is a person who is full of life creativity and conforms to the essential meaning of human existence. Even after suffering and at the end of his life, like Rui Jue in "Home", he still believes that "winter is over" when he looks at the flying snow in the sky.
"After Lu Xun, the writer in the history of modern Chinese literature who can most shape the soul of man"
Cao Yu said: "I like to write about people, I love people, I write about the pleasing characters that I think are heroes; I also hate people, I have written about humble, trivial villains. I feel how much people need to understand and how difficult it is to understand. No literary scholar dares to say this sentence - 'I have made people clear'. Tian Benxiang wrote in the Biography of Cao Yu: "He is the writer who can most shape the soul of people in the history of modern Chinese literature after Lu Xun. ”
In "Thunderstorm", Zhou Puyuan, who studied in Germany and became the chairman of the mining industry, has created a series of family tragedies in the family he considers the most orderly. The underworld leader Jinba in "Sunrise" never appears, but in the brutality of his thug Kurosan, he shows that he is powerful, he wants to rape a lonely little girl, and a group of evil people help and abett. The escaped little girl hid in Chen Bailu's room, chen Bailu looked at her full of scars, compared her heart to heart, soft and hard, and forced the banker Pan Yueting to rescue her. However, Jin Ba made a small plan to let the banker collapse and let Chen Bailu commit suicide.
The avenger Qiu Hu in "The Wilderness", his family's land is occupied by the landlord Jiao Yan Wang, his father is buried alive, his sister is sold into a brothel, he himself is slandered as a bandit and imprisoned, he escapes from the train transporting prisoners, and the fulcrum of life is supported by the emotion of revenge. Cruel persecution created his tragedy, and he became the creator of new tragedies. The old mrs. Zeng in "Beijingers", the old lady and mrs. Feng in "Home", they may not be evil people in the general sense, but their feudal patriarchal morality and ethics, the narrow-mindedness of male superiority and female inferiority, the domineering and hypocritical, selfish and reserved behavior, for young life, dignity, and yearning are still imprisoned and lethal.
Starting from the reality of existence, Cao Yu felt helpless and sad about the weakness and fate of human beings, but he unconsciously used dialectical thinking methods to see the richness and complexity of human existence and human connotations, and showed deep compassion for unfortunate people. Therefore, a series of characters he wrote formed a distinct group portrait of that era and that society, and they not only had the texture of life and the connotation of human nature, but also the brand of the times and the charm of philosophy.
If a problem is found in society and a drama is written, then the drama has no artistic purpose except to carry the problem. Cao Yu pays attention not to the "groove" of the drama's partial and temporary ideas, but to the "taste" of the drama that is not humane enough and aesthetic. Cao Yu said: "Realistic things cannot be so realistic. "Cao Yu's plays almost do not have an exact background, and it is also very vague. Cao Yu once said that he would not make a realistic representation of real life content in a clear concept of historical time, as Mao Dun's novel Midnight did.
He said that writing "Thunderstorm" is to write a narrative poem, since it is a poem, it must have the rhythm, artistic conception, wind and bone, and the charm of the poem, and there must be a gentle and generous Chinese poetics approach, "After all, people want to live, and should live happily, rotten flesh is dug up, and new cells will be born." Therefore, he describes reality without being limited to realism, he can see holiness in filth, light in darkness, and express the idealistic vision of the development trend. The majestic rammed songs echoing in the red glow of "Sunrise" and the steps of Fang Fang and Rui Zhen running to freedom in "Beijingers" are all brilliant dawns in the somber and dark background, and are poetic and allegorical expressions of real life.
China's outstanding playwrights all show such a characteristic, that is, their extensive involvement in Chinese and foreign dramas and profound qualities, such as Tian Han, Guo Moruo, Hong Shen, Li Jianwu, Yang Dai, and so on. Cao Yu's reading interests are very wide, from opera scripts, classical poems, novels, to foreign philosophy, aesthetics, etc., to ancient Greek drama, ancient Roman drama, shakespeare, Ibsen, O'Neill, Chekhov, etc., he is quite interested. His plays often involve mystery, primitiveness, fear, and nightmares, which are almost typical of Expressionist drama. However, his theatrical narrative style is popular with Chinese audiences. His theatrical structure is very exquisite, good at telling a dramatic story with a beginning and an end, suspense and tension, and the story is full of chinese culture's morality, ethics and poetic justice, which is one of the reasons why his drama is widely accepted by Chinese audiences.
Drama is different from literature, only the text, its form of existence is only half completed, only standing on the stage, can it glow with artistic brilliance. Cao Yu's plays have trained a number of directors and artists, who show their different artistic achievements in the dimension of their respective artistic pursuits. Cao Yu's drama has cultivated generations of actors, and the "diamond-like" artistic language in the play, the complex connotation of human nature, the emotional entanglement of love to the extreme and hate to cruelty, and the philosophical meaning of the dramatic situation, allowing the actors to temper their hearts and improve their level in artistic creation. Cao Yu's drama has also cultivated generations of audiences, people have entered the theater to dialogue with the souls of great playwrights, and integrate with the dramatic situation, in addition to feeling the classics of Cao Yu's drama, they are also separated from the mediocre and hurried life in the modern background. (Song Baozhen)
Editor-in-Charge: Qiu Lifang