Chen Zishan/Keynote Speaker Dong Tingting, Sun Qingyuan/Finishing
This article is compiled from the "Some Important Issues in the Study of Modern Literary Literature" seminar hosted by the School of Humanities of Shanghai Normal University and hosted by the Shanghai Key Innovation Team "Urban Culture and Literature" in December 2020. The keynote speakers were Professor Chen Zishan of the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University, and the interlocutors included Professor Chen Jianjun of the School of Literature of Wuhan University, Professor Liu Weiguo of the Department of Chinese of Sun Yat-sen University, Professor Wang Xirong of the School of Humanities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Professor Ye Chengsheng of the School of Literature of Shandong University, and Professor Zhang Yesong of the Department of Chinese of Fudan University. The lecture was presided over by Wang He, associate professor of the School of Humanities of Shanghai Normal University, and the following content was reviewed and approved by the keynote speaker.
Professor Chen Zishan of the Department of Chinese of East China Normal University
Chen Zishan (Professor, Department of Chinese, East China Normal University):
Good afternoon teachers and students! It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. The topic "Some Important Issues in the Study of Modern Literary Philology" was given to me by Teacher Wang He, and this topic is very large. What I will talk about next may not be important, but I am personally more interested in the issues, communicate with you, and ask you for advice.
First, a brief introduction to my academic experience. Brother Wang Xirong and I basically embarked on the path of modern literary academic research from the annotation of Lu Xun's works. I remember when I was in Beijing to participate in the annotation of Lu Xun's letters, there was a sunday break, there was time for free activities, once I went to the Chinese bookstore in Dengshikou, Beijing to read old books, and occasionally found a batch of works on Lu Xun, from the late 20s to the 40s and early 50s, there were about 20 books. At that time, because I had not seen so many concentrated works on Lu Xun before, I bought all these books, and it took almost half a month's salary, which was 36 yuan a month at that time. It took me a long time to find out that this batch of books belonged to the same owner, who signed the books, and even had the specific time and place to buy the books, which were bought in the Dong'an Market in Beijing in a certain month of a certain year. This person's name is Zhao Yansheng, and he is a forerunner in our modern literary research, which is called "Philology" today, and was more called "Historical Materials" before.
This forerunner has been studied in recent years. I published "Ten Lectures on Modern Chinese Literature and Philology" at Fudan University Press this time, and the rough edge book contained a collection ticket, and the pattern of this collection ticket was based on the cover image of a large book "Fifteen Hundred Kinds of Chinese Modern Novels and Dramas" that Zhao Yansheng cooperated with female writer Su Xuelin and French priest Shan Bingren in the late 1940s, and I wanted to express my tribute and nostalgia for the pioneers of modern literary philology. I don't know Zhao Yansheng, who died very early. He was mentioned in Mr. Tang Tao's book. He has been studied and has published specialized articles.
Looking back now, did my experience indicate that I would embark on the path of historical or philological research in my lifetime? As if there was a harbinger. Due to the nature of lu xun's work, in order to complete this annotation work, it is inevitable to deal with various original materials, to run libraries, to check materials, newspapers, magazines, shanghai library Xujiahui library, Beijing library newspaper library, and so on, soaking in the library. At that time, there were not such superior conditions as today, a variety of databases can be found, sitting at home, office can roam the database, at that time you have to read a newspaper one newspaper after another, I still remember the experience of going to the Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House library to find a variety of rare old newspapers. But it was in this process that I developed this interest and pleasure in sorting out the basic materials of modern literature. I remember that I cooperated with Mr. Liu Zengren, who is now at Qingdao University, first compiled the "Chronology of Lu Yan's Translations", and later cooperated with Mr. Wang Zili, who was originally in Shanghai Institute of Education and later merged into East China Normal University, and has now retired, compiled the "Yu Dafu Research Materials", including the "Chronology of Yu Dafu's Translations", as well as the "Yu Dafu Concise Genealogy", and also co-edited the "Chronology of Yu Dafu and Lu Xun's Interactions". After that, I myself compiled the chronology of the creation of several more important modern writers, the chronology of Pan Hannian's new literary creation, the chronology of Qian Zhongshu's collection of foreign languages before 1949, the chronology of Liang Shiqiu's pre-1949 translations, and the chronology of Tai Jingnong's works before 1949 and after 1949.
If I began my study of modern literature from the perspective of philology, then the process of compiling the chronology of the creation of these writers was an academic training, or exercise, for me. Because as we all know, the bibliographic index is also an indispensable part of our traditional philology. Of course, looking back today, these chronology have such and such deficiencies, in fact, we all know that the data collation work of modern writers, although there have been many years of continuous efforts by a group of scholars, there have been great achievements and progress, but in fact, the whole collection is incomplete, the data collection is not complete enough, so that the research work has such deviations or omissions, it is very common. Of course, the collection of Lu Xun's works is close to zero, and the possibility of discovering Lu Xun's own works is already very small, I dare not say that there is no more, there may be a little space. In addition to Lu Xun, the data construction of other writers, I used to call it the "document security system", to study a writer, about this writer's literature security system has not been established? To what extent is it established, and what is still lacking? These are the long-term problems we face. Although today is an era of the Internet, this problem still exists to varying degrees.
Just now Wang He said an important issue, one of which should be the contradiction between the collection of our data and the expansion of our research work, how to better face up to and deal with it? In the research process, we will encounter many specific and difficult problems, such as the problem of the writer's pen name, how we deal with it, there will often be great omissions and controversies. The deceased Brother Qin Hongxiang co-edited the "List of Writers of Modern Chinese Literature", a very large book, and it is very interesting to say "author" without "writer". But looking back now, the omission is also quite obvious, and later he added something, but before he could finish it, he himself died. This work is not just one generation of scholars, but may take several generations of scholars to complete it together. When we do not have a basic grasp of a writer's pen name, I dare not say that we have mastered all of it, it is likely that some pen names will never be discovered by us, but before we have a basic grasp, can our research on this writer be said to have been built on a very reliable basis? There are some of his works that we have not yet discovered, what is the nature of this part of the work, and these questions are not worthy of attention? Again, this is a very important issue.
This question may be a problem that has plagued us not only in the past, but also in the present and in the future, and although the field of contemporary literary studies is not as large as that of modern literature, it is not absent. Let's take a casual example, during the "Cultural Revolution", those writing classes, those newspaper pen names written by whom, have you figured out? No, or even a mess, so how do you comment further? And so on, and I think that's another serious problem. My personal interest later focused on several aspects, one was that Lu Xun was the center, and his relatives or friends, such as Zhou Zuoren and Yu Dafu, or his opponents, Liang Shiqiu, Ye Lingfeng, and other writers, were the focus of my interest. The second is those writers of the 1940s, represented by Zhang Ailing, but also writers like Shi Jingcun and Shao Xunmei, who also debated with Lu Xun a little later than Lu Xun, which are roughly such writers. In the study of these writers, I basically do chronology, collect their collections of foreign languages, compile their collections of works, and research data collections, in an attempt to do some work within my ability for the documentation protection system of these writers.
I also paid great attention to some of the more prominent cultural phenomena in the history of literature, publishing, and communication in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the emergence of rough edges. Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren's Zhou brothers advocated maobian ben, which was popular for a while in the 20s and 30s, and what kind of social and cultural psychology or what kind of cultural mechanism is behind this is worth studying. Some people have already compiled the history of Chinese raw edge books, but the amount of raw edge books is quite large, and I think no library can collect them all, not only literature, but even other liberal arts fields have raw edge books, and this phenomenon seems to have not been specifically discussed. I have written some articles, that is, on the raw edge of the book, how to combine it with the entire literary ecology, communication, this may be another issue worthy of attention. Because the raw edge was originally passed down from the West and Japan, it had a great impact in the first half of the last century. Not only in the first half of the year, in the 1950s, there was a rough edge book in the founding of the "Poetry Journal", but it also caused a great controversy, some people regarded the rough edge book as a petty bourgeois thing that was not needed by the workers and peasants, and they did not expect that Lu Xun just liked the raw edge book, and so on.
Personally, I also pay more attention to the author's autograph, the modern writer's signature. Autographs often involve interpersonal relationships between writers, cultural and literary exchanges, and some of the things behind that relationship and communication, not just a signature. I published a book, "Signature Book Series Examination", and the articles in this book were not included in the "Ten Lectures on modern Chinese Literature and Philology" because it became a system in its own right. I think the autograph is quite interesting, and I'm still working on the work of studying the autograph, and some of the autographs are really interesting, especially if one writer gives it to another writer. Today I brought a few copies, you can take a look, 2020 is the 110th anniversary of Qian Zhongshu's birth, I will show you another Shanghai writer is also Qian Zhongshu's old friend Ke Ling gave Qian Zhongshu and his wife "Nightclub". This book was donated by Ke Ling to the United Library, which was later merged into the Shanghai Library, and I don't know how this book flowed out of the library. Qian Zhongshu is very interesting, and many of the books given to him by others have been disposed of and not preserved. There's also a signed copy, one for the writers I care about in the '40s. At that time, there was a female writer, of course, not as famous as Zhang Ailing, but also more famous, called Shi Jimei, her masterpiece, short story collection "Fengyi Garden", she signed the rough edge to send to the writer Mr. Shen Ning. The more interesting thing about this book is a hardcover book, the spine is hot silver, the hardcover paper is very thin, we call it Bible paper, that is to say, it can be understood that Schmidt printed a small amount of this book on Bible paper and gave it to friends. At that time, Shen Shu edited the magazine, Shi Jimei was the author, which was a kind of friendship between the author and the editor, but unfortunately, when I read this book, Mr. Shen Shu had already died, otherwise I would show him this book, he must have been very emotional, this book can still reappear after more than seventy years. There is also a book that is more interesting. We all know that there is a Li Guangtian in the Beijing school of writers, and "Gallery Collection" is a very important collection of his essays. This book was given to Kang Siqun by Li Guangtian. Everyone knows that Kang Siqun edited (in fact, shi Jicun edited, he published) "Wen Rice Sketch", and worked in Pingming Publishing House in the early liberation period. Although he is not a very famous writer in the modern literary world, he is also an author, a cultural person, and an editor, and when we look at it, we know that he and Li Guangtian also have back and forth. These books may tell us the truth of the literary world that we did not understand before. The most interesting is Guo Moruo's book, "Memoirs of the War of Resistance". The book is hardcover, the spine text is gilded, and the signature is even more rare, not Guo Moruo's signature, it is the signature of Liu Shengya, the editor-in-chief of Qunyi Publishing House, who published the book, and the signature content is particularly interesting: "This book has been printed in ten copies, and it has not been released." When a souvenir is given to you from afar. Defang Sheng Ya presented Beijing in the summer of 1951. "Defang is Wei Defang, Liu Shengya's wife." Everyone looks at the title page of the book, printed two words "sample", and the bottom is printed "Qunyi Publishing House 1951". But the book has no copyright page, and when exactly it was printed in 1951 was probably before the summer of 1951. The book has a story that I wanted to publish in 1951, but in the end I didn't publish it. As far as I know, there are only two copies of this "sample" that can be preserved now, one of which is in Beijing, but there is no signature, and this one is signed by Liu Shengya, and this one is under the heavens. The appearance of this book shows that the "Guo Moruo Chronicle" wrote the book in 1949, and this statement cannot be established. Down to a bigger question, why was it not finally published in 1951? Why not publish? The reasons deserve further investigation. It was later published, and in the 1960s it was published by Tianjin Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House, renamed "Hongbo Qu", but there were changes in it. Originally, there was also an appendix, a long article written by Feng Naichao, which was deleted, and the content and afterword of the book were revised. The emergence of such a book provides us with a new and rare historical material for guo moruo's research. So I have a strong interest in autographs myself, and I will continue to do them if time and conditions permit, and the second series of "Autographed Books" hopes to meet you in the near future. We can comb through literary history through such a special perspective, focusing on some issues that may have been overlooked by us before.
Literary history is written from different angles. In the past, I worked with Mr. Qian Liqun and Mr. Wu Fuhui to compile the Chronicle of Modern Chinese Literature: Focusing on Literary Advertising, which can be further done. But there is a big contradiction here, some very important works in the history of literature do not have advertisements, or although there are advertisements we can not find for a while, because we are now looking for information is often looking for works, looking for foreign languages, and paying little attention to advertisements. But now we'll find that thanks to the advent of databases, we can find a lot of ads more easily than before, and these ads tend to provide a lot of new information that may bring new perspectives to our research work. My new book is called "Ten Lectures on the Study of Modern Chinese Literature and Literature", which is "Ten Stresses", which is one of the whole set of books, all of which are "Ten Stresses", so I must also have "Ten Stresses", not "Eight Stresses", "Six Lectures", nor "Twelve Stresses", so I put together a number, that is, "Ten Stresses", and this "Ten Stresses" is only ten aspects that I care about, of course, I have made some attempts and explorations in these ten aspects.
Next I turn to the question of manuscripts. I have written several articles on the manuscripts of modern writers before, and there are manuscripts of works, such as the manuscript of Yu Dafu's "She is a Weak Woman"; there are also manuscripts of letters, I originally annotated Lu Xun's letters, so I have always paid attention to the manuscripts of Lu Xun's letters, the newly discovered manuscripts of Lu Xun's letters to Yu Dafu; the manuscript of the diary; and the appearance of the manuscript of the "Diary" of Hu Shi's early study in the United States, although "Hu Shi's Study Abroad Diary" It has been published for a long time, but there is a big gap between manuscripts and printed copies. There are now researchers and doctoral students specializing in these manuscripts, several more heavyweight articles discussing the manuscript of Hu Shi's early diary; including the first manuscript of Ba Jin's "Remembering Xiao Shan". I also pay a lot of attention to manuscript research. Manuscript science will be held tomorrow to discuss how to advance the study of modern writers' manuscripts to a new height and give greater importance. Because from manuscript to publication to reprint, perhaps the connection is not as simple as we previously thought, and there are many questions that can be revisited to discuss: Why was it revised? Who is changing? It is a question of whether the author himself modifies or edits, the publisher modifies, and so on. This is very interesting and often brings up a whole bunch of new questions. Mr. Zhou Limin, the former residence of Ba Jin, wrote a supplement to the "Journal of Modern Chinese" compiled by me, discussing the "Preface" written by Ba Jin in the translation of Ai Luo Xianke's "Happy Ship", and the few paragraphs at the end of the article collected in volume 17 of the Complete Works of Ba Jin, which are these few sentences, and there are several different versions. Of course, we have not seen the original manuscript of this preface, but it is such a very specific question, how to deal with it? He finally concluded that "the cut is still messy".
So from raw books to manuscripts, to collections of foreign languages, to societies, genres, to publications, to literary activities, it is all within the scope of my concern. Of course, due to the limited vision and limited ability, it is impossible to handle all of them well, but I try to pay attention to it and deal with it. What should also be emphasized is the emergence of a large number of writers' letters and diaries in recent years, which means for our writers' research. This is also a very big problem. Just now Dong Limin mentioned that the norms of philology, from theory to method, may not be a problem that can be solved in one step, and we can only gradually improve it. The ancients had a complete set of relatively mature ways and methods for the collation of ancient books, which can be applied to the collation of our modern and contemporary literature, and which ones need to be adjusted, these are very important issues. The amount of modern diaries and letters may also be enormous, although not many writers can keep diaries intact. Lu Xun still lacked a year of diaries, and Zhou Zuoren's diaries were relatively complete, but after 1934, in addition to the two years of 1939 and 1949, more had not been published, and there was a lot of information and a lot of important materials. Although Zhu Ziqing's diaries of other writers have been published, there are many problems in them. How we deal with these things and how we deal with them are all problems. Many of them have not been published, and when the conditions are ripe, they can be published, including Uddhav's diary, and Uddhav has many diaries that have not been published. These problems are also what we face, and after the publication we may have a new, if not a new, or at least partially new understanding of the writer's view. How to deal with a large number of diaries and letters? We often encounter a difficult problem in compiling the complete works of writers, that is, the collection of letters. How many letters a writer has written in a lifetime, often in considerable numbers, why write so many letters, some people even regard some part of these letters as creations, if so, you turn a blind eye to these letters, that is to say, you gave up commenting on this part of the creation, is it appropriate? This is also a big and important issue. We now only have e-mail in the Internet age, and the sixth issue of the Journal of Modern Chinese this year has published a special album of "Correspondence Studies of Modern and Contemporary Writers", and the reason for this album is to attract the attention of researchers. When the conditions are ripe, we are also ready to launch the album "Diary Studies of Modern and Contemporary Writers". Therefore, a series of existing problems, the problems we have discovered, and how we face and deal with them are all worthy of further discussion.
Just now Teacher Dong mentioned the older generation of modern literature scholars at Shanghai Normal University, mentioned Mr. Shao Bozhou and Mr. Chen Juan, and I also thought of Mr. Shi Chengjun, who is still alive. When I think of Mr. Shao Bozhou, I immediately think of his hearty laughter, he is a Mao Dun research expert, a very good old man, many predecessors have left us. Mr. Sun Xun, who died yesterday, he studied Chinese classical novels, there is a speech that is very interesting, he said that when you study Chinese classical novels, philology must be faced and seriously faced, in the 20s, he found the fat batch Jia Shu Ben "Dream of the Red Chamber", and in the thirties he found "Golden Plum Bottle", which brought a great impetus to the study of Chinese classical novels, he said that it may be difficult to find such works now, and he believes that this is a bottleneck in the study of classical novels. If you move this point of view to the study of modern literature, it may not be easy for you to discover the heavyweight works of an important modern writer now, and at the beginning I talked about it, Lu Xun, you want to discover new works, is it easy? The odds are almost zero. What about other writers? Wang He is studying the New Sensation School, and is there room for the New Sensation Writers to discover? Perhaps this problem should be further practiced and solved by Wang He. Another example is Zhang Ailing, and it may be impossible to find a work like "Little Reunion", but when commemorating the 100th anniversary of her birth, I still found her translation of "Four Masters of the Ice Ocean", although not complete, not all serialized in Hong Kong newspapers, but also a new discovery. In fact, the discovery of new materials for a certain writer often brings some new problems and causes us to think further. Speaking of Zhang Ailing, I got a very interesting thing two days ago, and I can also show it to you. This is a "Long Live the Wife" instruction manual, this instruction manual is very interesting, know Zhang Ailing must know, about the movie "Long Live the Wife", there was a debate, at that time many Shanghai newspapers including the "Ta Kung Pao" and so on have been published, involving some writers, such as Hong Shen and so on. In May 1949, Shanghai was liberated. But I didn't expect that this instruction manual was after liberation, and after liberation, a movie written by Zhang Ailing was staged. Look at the instruction manual, this cinema is called "People's Film Theater", there is a plot introduction behind it, the first sentence is very interesting: "The story takes place in the old society", this is all after liberation, and then there is an introduction to the entire plot, the following is "director Sang Arc screenwriter Zhang Ailing". This movie is not necessarily screened in Shanghai, I initially checked, Shanghai can not find the "People's Film Theater", it should be a big city, but also need to be further investigated. Of course, such a material is not particularly important, but at least it tells us one thing: after 1949, zhang Ailing's films were still released. This is something we didn't know before, we only know that Zhang Ailing still published her novel essays in Shanghai after 1949, but her films were still staged, day and night, all day long, which was very interesting.
I once thought that we are now in the information society, the Internet era, our modern literary research, including contemporary literary research, the whole document security system should be different from before, this is a big problem. Yesterday I saw an article by Chen Shangjun of Fudan University on the study of classical literary literature in the Internet era, and he said that due to the Internet and databases, the collation of his "Quan Tang Poems" has made rapid progress, but if it is put into our modern literary field, our database of modern writers, the total collection of new literary works of the entire era, can it be done? The sum of the Quan Tang Poems he could do. In modern times, due to the emergence of "print capitalism", vernacular works have appeared in large quantities, and who dares to say that which database can exhaust all the works of modern literature in the Republic of China period? Not so far, right? He can compile "Quan Tang Poems", and Wang He can compile all the novels of modern literature? All prose? All new poems? This is terrible, of course not impossible, maybe in the near future, this database may be built, maybe it can, but it is not realistic at the moment. "Quan Tang Poems" and "Quan Song Ci" can be handled well with the help of modern means, more and more perfect, we don't want to say that all the works of modern literature, that is, the database of a certain writer is not complete, Lu Xun's database is so perfect? Many Lu Xun articles downloaded online have many typos. Brother Liao Jiuming compiled the "Compilation of Memories of Guo Moruo's Materials" and prepared to publish a complete set of books, but what about the entire electronic database? Is that enough? Are there any major omissions? I think it's all a problem. What should researchers do? Next year there will be the commemoration of two important literary societies, one is the centenary of the Literary Research Society, and the other is the centenary of the Creation Society. I didn't see it. Did all of you see that? Is anyone doing it? To what extent? We have more major projects now, have you made the most basic things? This is all a problem, not a single person can complete, not that I am personally interested in me to do one, need a group of people who are aware of the importance of this problem to do, this may also be done well, more convenient for us to use. Next you have to be able to use it, how to use it better. Then we can take the second step, to come up with some new ideas, new ideas, new ideas. You didn't do the first one well, how to proceed? Therefore, modern literary philology actually has a practical problem, and this practice includes how to better integrate with modern technology. The original foundation of classical literature is relatively good, the literature collation of this set of norms is originally very good, and now it is in the front, doing better, and our modern literary research is not backward, at least lagging behind. Even if you cut in with a small entrance, you make a database of old style poems for modern writers, from Lu Xun's generation, many modern writers write old style poems, contemporary such as Nie Shuyi and others, can you make a database? Does anyone do it? Guo Moruo's poems after the 50s, he himself thinks that they are not well written, but if he wants to do it, whether it is good or bad, he must also put it in. At present, the database of old-style poetry of the Republic of China may still be limited to the literati who specialize in writing old-style poetry, and is it included in the level of new literature? Like Shen Zudi, one body and two terms, the words are well written, the new poems are also excellent, both sides are crossed, I hope that both sides will be included, more ideal. And this difficulty is quite large, the south of the Republic of China, the Beijing-Shanghai area, the Yangtze River Delta this area, the north such as the Great Northwest, the northeast, etc., each place has its own cultural heritage, these areas of the literati old style poetry is incredible, massive information.
In my "Ten Lectures", the last two issues involved belong to interdisciplinary disciplines, one is the relationship between new literature and music, and the other is the relationship between new literature and art. I think these two are very closely related, especially new literature and fine arts, to the contemporary era, until today, Mr. Huang Yongyu is both a great painter and a great writer, and he is still writing long stories in his nineties. Many artists and painters themselves have written very well and are also a writer. Our modern literature and contemporary literary research are often ignored, ignored, or not paid enough attention to this cultural phenomenon and literary phenomenon. Of course, we will mention Lu Xun's art design, his cover design, in addition to Lu Xun? There are still many people, there are now some researchers, especially art history, book binding researchers are doing this work, there are some new materials will be disclosed, but in general there is still a lot of space, often the new literary works of the binding design concept and the author's pursuit reflected in the work is combined, how do we study this, this is a big problem.
There is also the relationship between music, modern literature and music. There are many works in our modern literature, and in order to shape the needs of the characters, we have written about music, or related to music, and no one seems to have studied them. Musicians don't care about these things, I've talked to experts in music history, they don't have much interest in this, so what about us who do literature? Why do the heroes and heroines of the novel listen to Beethoven, and where is the writer's intention? Issues such as these should be studied. Studying Shen Congwen, I think we should also understand that Shen Congwen prides himself on being a "countryman", but in fact he is very interested in classical music and likes to listen to classical music. What are the implications? Will experts who study Shen Congwen notice this problem? In his works after the 1940s, especially in prose, music is written in many places, which is of course related to the fact that one of his sisters, Zhang Zhaohe, is engaged in music, but if Shen Congwen does not resonate and does not have this cultivation, he may not be so interested in music.
Of course, many of the aspects mentioned above are not in my own ability to do well, and I am just asking questions in the hope of attracting everyone's attention. Another example is the relationship between modern literature and the so-called old literature and popular literature. There are many scholars studying popular literature now, but is it appropriate to name all of these literatures "popular literature" and "old literature"? There may be controversy, it may not be appropriate, your is the new, people must be the old? He also sympathizes with the working people, his vernacular may be better written than you, your Europeanized vernacular people can't understand it, why do you say that people are old? Is it necessary to be new and old at every turn? Is the new one necessarily good? How to deal with such questions in philology? There are a large number of writers in the new literature, all of whom started from the so-called popular literature and old literature, such as Dai Wangshu, Shi Jingcun, Zhang Tianyi, Ye Shengtao, etc., and there are also the opposite, from new literature to old literature, such as Gong Baiyu, who wrote martial arts. I once wanted to compile a "Collection of Literary and Literary Works of Modern Writers", modern writers, especially the May Fourth generation, by the early 1930s, the literary and literary works were well written, like Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, Yu Pingbo, Qian Zhongshu, and collected these literary articles, which was very interesting. Wang Tongzhao's mother died, he wrote a memorial essay, very beautiful, I happened to see it in an old book stall in Shanghai, the boss was particularly powerful, he said: Teacher Chen, you see Wang Tongzhao! As soon as I couldn't see it, I immediately bought the thread-bound sacrifice text that Wang Tongzhao's mother had died. Contacting Wang Tongzhao's son, he said that he did not know that my grandmother died, and my father had written a sacrifice text and provided it to him, and it was just in time to supplement the "Complete Works of Wang Tongzhao", which is a very important historical material. The old learning skills of these writers are very deep, and Wang Tong wrote very emotionally according to this sacrifice text, and his deep love for his mother was written in chinese. Those of us who are engaged in the study of new literature often pay no attention to this aspect, and rarely pay attention to this aspect. Now that we are talking about traditional Chinese culture, how can traditional culture be reflected in modern writers? Of course, Lu Xun said that Chinese books are best not to read and read less, but I think we should still read them well today, especially the literary articles written by their group. Of course, writers from the 1930s onwards to the 1940s were much less skilled in this regard. Those of us who study the old literature of the Republic of China often exclude the new literature, and they often do not pay attention to these problems.
I look forward to our modern literary philology to have a new look in new technical means and under new conditions, so as to provide stronger documentary support for the study of our modern literature and the study of contemporary literature. In addition, there is a question of archives, which should also be raised in particular. A large number of various archives, if they can be better utilized, is an important impetus for the study of modern literature. Professor Shen Weiwei of Nanjing University, who has been leading a group of his students to sort out the things in the Second Historical Archive of Nanjing, has made many interesting discoveries, and the content is very rich, and we cut in from the perspective of literary research, not from the perspective of political science or sociology. In fact, engaged in history, sociology, the use of archives is very full, we used to think that literature and archives are relatively distant, but now slowly found that archives for literary research is also very helpful, and modern writers directly related or indirectly related to the archives, but also need to be systematically sorted out and used, of course, this is a more interesting problem. These issues should be raised, discussed, and brought to the attention and attention.
Wang He (Associate Professor, School of Humanities, Shanghai Normal University):
Thank you Teacher Chen for your wonderful report! In addition to reviewing his own academic experience at the beginning and coming into contact with Zhao Yansheng's materials when he was in Beijing, Teacher Chen discussed some new and important aspects of modern and contemporary literature research that he felt had developed on the basis of traditional philology and classical philology over the years, such as the study of signature books and manuscripts, and of course, the collection and use of conventional documentary materials such as writers' letter diaries, archival materials, etc. Taking archival materials as an example, there have been some discussions in recent years, including how to combine archival materials with the research of contemporary literary history, and there are also some applications in the field of modern literary research, but in general, the study of modern literary history, including the study of philology, the attention to archival materials is not very enough, perhaps this is also related to our research habits, most of our research results, the use, processing, citation of data is somewhat arbitrary, when collecting data, there may be criticism of data, "historical criticism" Sometimes there may be no special attention. For example, the same information about a certain point of view or a certain problem, in terms of its reliability, may be more reliable than the author's work, his self-statement, some other people's comments on him, and so on. Of course, Teacher Chen also talked about the construction of the database, because I have been doing digital humanities in recent years, especially concerned about this aspect of the problem, although Teacher Chen himself does not use the computer, but he is very sensitive to these new phenomena and new problems, but also has been particularly encouraged to support us, the database for our entire not only the study of classical literature, or the study of modern literary history, philology, the entire humanities academic will have a great help, convenience, and may have many challenges. Of course, there are many databases of modern literature at home and abroad, but thematic databases, such as the database of old-style poetry mentioned by Teacher Chen, including, for example, a good and complete Lu Xun research database, may not exist, nor may there be any database of the Literary Research Society and the Creation Society. Many of the major projects in our country are historical data collation and database construction, but these databases have been built, on the other hand, after the construction of the database can not be used for us, is the CD version or online, online, in addition to how to design the function of these databases, is not open, as a whole to provide what information, which can be used for us to do some data analysis and mining, not just a simple information query, etc., but also need to be discussed and practiced.
Teacher Chen Gang also talked about the study of the relationship between new literature and old literature, popular literature, and music and art, and the research in this area is probably very difficult. Because on the one hand, we are required to have a good grasp of the study of music history, art history, and art history, and on the other hand, after we have this grasp, we can better deal with the relationship between literature, music and art. Teacher Chen gave the example of Shen Congwen, which is very many in modern literature. For example, in The New Sensation novels, there are a lot of French classical music, arias, etc., and I've actually been wondering why they write about these things. We cannot say that they are completely in line with the fashion, of course, "trending" is a characteristic of the Shanghai school or the entire new sensation school, of course, we cannot say that they have no musical cultivation and artistic cultivation at all, purely because of "trending". Of course, Ye Lingfeng's artistic accomplishment is still very high, and others may not be very high, but it is still worth considering the problem that they put these things into their own texts and into the context of the entire narrative and lyricism.
The key is how we bring these issues up today, relate them to each other, and finally make a new interpretation. I think that on the one hand, our data collation work can provide a batch of basic and reliable literature for the study of modern literature and literature, and on the other hand, on this basis, we may be able to innovate and do some new research.
Editor-in-Charge: Shanshan Peng