【Chasing Light Literary Giant: Commemorating the 125th Anniversary of Mao Dun's Birth】
Author: Yang Yang (President of China Mao Dun Research Association, Professor of Shanghai Theater Academy)
The literary history's discussion of Mao Dun's literary achievements is related to the Celebration of Mr. Mao Dun's 50th birthday celebration and the 25th anniversary of his creation held in Chongqing in June 1945. At that time, Xinhua Ribao, the organ of the Cpc chongqing, successively compiled and distributed a special issue for Mao Dun's birthday, publishing an editorial drafted by Liao Mosha and revised and approved by Zhou Enlai and Wang Ruofei, entitled "The Journey of Chinese Literary and Art Workers," as well as Wang Ruofei's congratulatory article on behalf of the CPC entitled "The Glory of China's Cultural Circles, the Glory of Chinese Intellectuals -- Wishing Mr. Mao Dun's Fiftieth Birthday." In both articles, the concepts of "journey", "journey" and "road" appear frequently. In particular, Wang Ruofei's article clearly states that "Mr. Mao Dun explored a realistic path for China's new literature and art."
After the founding of New China, modern literary researchers attached great importance to the issue of Mao Dun's realist road, and the two most influential monographs in the field of Mao Dun's research in the 1950s, Mr. Shao Bozhou's "Mao Dun's Literary Road" and Mr. Ye Ziming's "On Mao Dun's Literary Road in forty Years", invariably linked Mao Dun's literary achievements and literary historical positioning with the concept of "road". Mr. Fan Jun published a special paper entitled "Two Works on mao dun's literary path" in the second issue of literary review magazine in 1960. Mao Dun himself seems to agree with this generalization, and when he published his literary memoirs in his later years, he named the book "The Road I Have Traveled". Therefore, mao dun's literary achievements and social practice are vividly linked to the "road" issue, which has a special historical origin and a specific historical connotation.
Picture of Mao Dun in his later years
1. Call on literary creators to feel and experience the lives of ordinary people in the vast social world
Mao Dun's literary path was born in conjunction with the realism that advocated "art for life". Such realist literature contrasts with the false literature that xiangbi fabricates, mannerisms, and whitewashes. During the May Fourth period, Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo and others launched the "Literary Research Society", they emphasized "literature of blood and tears", the purpose of which was to make literary creators face up to social reality, re-establish the relationship between literature and social real life on the basis of a critique, that is, to completely open the creators' social horizons, remove the barriers between creators and contemporary social life, let literary creators feel and experience the lives of ordinary people in the vast social world, oppose vassalage and elegance, and emphasize realistic techniques. Instead of making up the wall fiction to carry out literary creation. This consciousness of Mao Dun conforms to the needs of the times of the May Fourth New Literary Trend, comes from his literary and social practice, and has a strong sense of presence.
When he edited the Novel Monthly in 1921, a large number of submissions were indiscriminate works of disease-free groaning, completely immersed in the personal world regardless of social pain. Mao Dun was extremely dissatisfied with such literary creations, and he wrote articles such as "Spring Creative Circle Comic Review", "Commenting on the Creation of April, May and June", "Impressions of one year and plans for next year" and criticized them. He advocated realism and naturalism in the hope of changing this literary status quo.
At the same time, from 1920 onwards, Mao Dun became acquainted with Chen Duxiu and others and participated in the activities of the Shanghai Marxist Group. When the Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, Mao Dun was one of the earliest party members. Moreover, under the influence of Mao Dun, his younger brother Shen Zemin and his classmate Zhang Wentian also joined the Chinese Communist Party and became the earliest core members and leaders of the CCP. From 1925 to 1927, Mao Dun went to Guangzhou and Wuhan to participate in the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, engaged in practical political activities, and held important propaganda positions. This was the period of Mao Dun's "professional revolutionaries". He was exposed to all aspects of Chinese society under the storm of the Revolution. After the defeat of the Revolution in 1927, Mao Dun returned to the field of literature. The rich experience of reality has expanded Mao Dun's literary vision and social life experience, and also enhanced his thinking ability, social discernment and ability to grasp reality. In terms of literary creation, during this period, Mao Dun had a sensational trilogy of "eclipses" in the literary world, and theoretical research included a series of writers' works such as "Lu Xun", "Xu Zhimo", "Ice Heart" and "Ding Ling". The dual combination of creative practice and theoretical construction has promoted the exploration path of new Chinese literature in many aspects and laid the foundation for Mao Dun's position in new literary practice.
Xia Zhiqing, a professor at Columbia University in the United States, highly affirmed Mao Dun's literary talent and creative achievements in the "History of Modern Chinese Novels", believing that Mao Dun's creation did not have the "superficial" traces of ordinary young writers. This is because Mao Dun has extraordinary literary accomplishment skills and insights.
The Czech sinologist Pushk believes that Mao Dun's realist creative experience has effectively enriched and promoted the "narrative" category in the aesthetic category of modern Chinese literature. If modern Chinese literature can be distinguished into two aspects in the aesthetic category, "lyricism" and "narrative", Mao Dun's literary creation and theoretical construction are more closely related to "narrative". Moreover, this connection is of world significance, because Hegel's discussion of "lyricism" and "narrative" is biased to associate the modern world with the category of "narrative". That is to say, with the "lyrical" era of human civilization represented by ancient Greece, after the historical changes of the industrial revolution in modern times, the era of "narrative" began. In this regard, Mao Dun's literary creation experience and theoretical construction are exactly in sync with the historical process of modernization of Chinese society, and also echo the pace of change in world literature.
Mao Dun's "Reading Jiaxuan Collection" handwriting data picture
2. When depicting the relationship between the characters, conduct extensive social investigation and literary thinking, and touch on the key
Mao Dun's contemporaries, such as Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai, were also very concerned about Mao Dun's creative experience. In a letter to Cao Jinghua, Lu Xun affirmed the realist achievements of Mao Dun's Midnight. After the publication of Midnight, Qu Qiubai published successively "Midnight" and "Reading midnight", which positively evaluated Mao Dun's realistic literary creation. These evaluations are not only literary assistance with a common voice, but more importantly, encouragement and affirmation of certain exploratory attempts in Chinese literature.
At that time, it was not uncommon for works to express left-wing ideological feelings against the backdrop of modern urban life. Mao Dun's "Midnight" is different in that the work conveys more than just ordinary, personal feelings and feelings. If Balzac once promised to be a "clerk" of an era, then "Midnight" can be regarded as a realistic picture of Chinese social changes around the 1930s and a long epic. Among them, a variety of modern characters appear on the stage of the novel in the form of group portraits. Bankers, industrialists, warlords, politicians, university professors, socialites, doctors, contractors, textile workers and fugitive landlords are all special figures in China's cities in the context of the times. They appear in large-scale series in a group manner, which has never been seen in the works of previous writers.
Moreover, when depicting the relationship between the characters, Mao Dun's literary performance is not flashy, not impressionistic, but conducts extensive social investigation and literary thinking, which is very distinctive and touches the key. Take "Midnight" as an example of Shanghai's grasp of urban life. How to reveal the soul of urban life has always been an important issue facing modern Chinese literature. Since the 20th century, Chinese literature has expressed rural life, giving birth to a number of outstanding writers' works, and the performance of urban life is relatively weak. Mao Dun's "Midnight" is one of the few works that have succeeded in expressing urban life, and its revelation of the core content of urban life is accurate and powerful.
In "Midnight", he not only shows the conflict between financial capital and industrial capital in old Shanghai in the 1930s, but also shows the conflict between financial capital and industrial capital at that time with Chinese politics and China's local economy. This kind of performance is unique in the modern Chinese novel world. Mao Dun may not have fully understood the secrets of financial transactions at that time, but when financial capital and industrial capital clashed, he saw that the industrial capital at that time was vulnerable. For the operating rules of finance capital at that time, Mao Dun saw that it was entangled with political power, clearly revealing that in that era, no financial giant could be separated from the protection of political power, and the political power at that time also needed the support of consortiums and financial giants if they wanted to win in the chaos of warlord chaos in China. Such urban life has never been expressed before Mao Dun's "Midnight", and it is difficult to find such an expression in later writers' works.
The reason for this uniqueness may be related to Mao Dun's experience and his erudition. Because few modern writers can be like Mao Dun, from the beginning of the literary road, there is a deep and unique accumulation of life, which makes him write related characters and stories, many details and scenes naturally emerge.
In addition, Mao Dun's literary knowledge is well known. In the 1940s, it was rumored in the literary circles that Mao Dun memorized "Dream of the Red Chamber", and he could recite a random chapter at a friend's banquet. And his reading of foreign literature is also amazing. The critic Li Jianwu recorded in "Remembrance of the Western Truth" that Mao Dun carefully studied the original works of the history of Western literary criticism in his early years and was very familiar with the evolution history of Western literary trends. In addition, according to statistics, the translations included in the Complete Works of Mao Dun alone involve more than 200 works from more than 40 countries, which reveals the depth of Mao Dun's literary accumulation from one side. Therefore, the broad and profound path of realism is not a simple imitation in Mao Dun's literary world, but the result of his multi-faceted life exploration and the long-term accumulation and integration of countless knowledge.
3. Deeply and lastingly inspire generations of Chinese writers to devote themselves to the creation of novels
Since the 1920s and 1930s, Mao Dun's literary creation and theoretical construction have always exerted a practical influence on the Chinese literary scene, and writers and critics have continuously agreed with his views and consciously accepted his ideological influence. In particular, after 1949, Mao Dun has been serving as the chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, founding important literary newspapers and periodicals such as "Literature and Art Daily" and "People's Literature", which have had a profound impact on new Chinese literature, and he has published more than 1 million words of critical articles. Like Yao Xueyu, who created "Li Zicheng" and Liu Qing, who wrote "History of Entrepreneurship", in terms of creative ideas, they are all subservient to Mao Dun's realism.
In addition, a number of powerful writers such as the novelists Ru Zhijuan and Lu Wenfu, who grew up in the 1950s, have been strongly recommended by Mao Dun. When summing up his own creative experience, Ru Zhijuan once said: "I read Mr. Mao Dun's "Spring Silkworms", and what I see here is only the sorrow and hard work and hope of the silkworm keepers. Is it the old Tongbao's sorrow, superstition, and ruthlessness? Is it the steamship that comes out from behind the bend? Or is it the cocoon factory with the gates closed tightly? ...... I think I saw how the needle tip of imperialism sucked blood into every vein of China, and I saw the troubles of that era. I don't know whether this is a small way to see the big, or a big way to see the big, in short, I think that a short story of thousands of words can contain so much and so deep social content, which is what I envy and what I want to pursue. ”
In the 1960s, Mao Dun promoted the theory of "middle characters", and a number of "middle characters" with unique personality characteristics were produced in the creation of novels. They were in stark contrast to the "heroic figures" that were popular in the literary world at that time. Judging from the influence of later literary history, novel images such as Ru Zhijuan and Lu Wenfu's "intermediate characters" and Liang Sanlaohan with the personality characteristics of "intermediate characters" in Liu Qing's "History of Entrepreneurship" have stood the test of time and are still loved by readers. This proves mao Dun's creative influence from the creative experience.
On March 14, 1981, before his death, Mao Dun wrote a letter to the Secretariat of the China Writers Association, donating his life savings to the China Writers Association, hoping to establish a long novel reward fund. The Chinese Writers Association accepted the proposal to establish a novel award named after him. The Mao Dun Literature Prize began in 1982 with the first selection and has been held for 10 years. In the past 40 years, Chinese society has undergone earth-shaking historical changes, and literary values have also undergone great changes, but Mao Dun's literary influence has subtly and deeply and persistently inspired generations of Chinese writers to devote themselves to the creation of novels and contributed many excellent long works in the special way of the "Mao Dun Literature Award".
The in-depth study and discussion of Mao Dun's literary concepts has deeply attracted current literary researchers. Founded in 1983, the China Mao Dun Research Association has members at home and abroad. In the new century, the members continued to make new achievements, not only publishing the 60-volume "80 Years of Mao Dun Research Book Series", but also compiling and publishing the 43-volume "Complete Works of Mao Dun". The above phenomena show that Mao Dun still has literary influence and social influence, and his creation is an important historical resource and value reference for us to continuously promote the development of Chinese literature.
Guangming Daily ( 2021-09-01 14 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily