Anecdotes about Hong's characters.

Advocating Byron Shelley but being forced into marriage by his family.

1In July, 922, Hong graduated from Jinshan Middle School with the sixth place. His father had hoped that he could find a job as a primary school teacher, but he insisted on continuing his studies. In August of that year, he set foot on the road of studying in Guangzhou and became a student of English Department of Guangdong Normal School.

The new environment, especially the new language, presents a new world to Hong. Shortly after entering school, he began to read books in foreign languages such as The Tales of Shakespeare, and then began to read Shakespeare's original works. Besides Shakespeare, he is also interested in the poems of Byron and Shelley. Their poems are full of romanticism and passion, pursuing freedom and democracy, and changing Hong's inner world. In his books and letters to friends, he changed his signature to "Byron Red Scarf" or "Byron Red".

1in the spring of 923, Xu published a notice in Dalingdong Daily in Shantou, and initiated the establishment of the earliest new literature society in Chaoshan-Flame Society. Seeing the notice in Guangzhou, Hong wrote to Xu and joined the Flame Club. Flame, the social magazine of Flame Society, is published as an annex of Dalingdong Daily. Hong often contributes to Flame and publishes some old-fashioned poems on it.

During the winter vacation that year, Hong tried to write a story for the newspaper. He wrote a short story entitled "Mourning for a Little Man Before His Death", which was submitted to a newspaper in Hong Kong and published as a result.

When I was studying in Guangzhou, my parents got married for Hong. The girl's name is Huang Chanying, and she is an illiterate girl in the surrounding village. Hong had a good heart at that time. He fought several times, but his family finally threatened to cut off the relationship and financial resources. In desperation, he finally went home and married Huang. After that, he rarely saw Huang Chanying except for a few short trips home.

Wandering after the failure of the Great Revolution

In the 1920s, Guangzhou set off a revolutionary wave. As a young man who yearns for an ideal society of freedom, equality and fairness, Hong is hard to ignore. Gradually, he hid the depression caused by frustrated marriage and lovelorn, and joined the revolution.

1924165438+10, Guangdong Normal University, Law School and Agricultural College merged into Guangdong University (later renamed Sun Yat-sen University). At this time, he met Xu Su, a member of * * *. Xu Su Hun is a Chao 'an native, with the ties of fellow villagers. Hong and his classmate Dai and others organized the Chaoshan Students' Revolutionary Comrades' Meeting among the students of Guangdong University, which was very brilliant in the student movement in Guangzhou. 1926, after introduction, Hong joined China and worked in the overseas department of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang.

During this period, Hong also found his ideal revolutionary partner-Qin Jing. Qin Jing came to Guangzhou from his hometown in Chaoshan and was admitted to the women's movement workshop hosted by He Xiangning. After graduation, he was assigned to the overseas department as a clerk and joined China through Hong's introduction. 1On March 2, 927, they got married in Guangzhou. Hong has always advocated both revolution and love. After they got married, they went to the photo studio and took a photo as a witness of their love. Behind the photo, Hong wrote this passage: "Love the revolution, don't sacrifice it with love! The meaning of revolution is to seek the liberation of mankind, and the meaning of love is to seek the harmony between the two sexes. They both have the same immortal real price! "

However, the sweet days didn't last long. 12 In April, Chiang Kai-shek launched a counter-revolutionary coup in Shanghai. A few days later, Guangzhou also fell into blood shed, and Hong was also on the wanted list. In four months, he traveled from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Shantou, and then to Singapore and Siam (now Thailand). During this period, he hid in Tibet, was arrested in Hong Kong, starved in Singapore, drifted in the Chao Phraya River ... and suffered a lot.

Find the direction of life and create exile.

/kloc-in the autumn of 0/927, Hong and Dai returned to Shanghai, heard the news of the outbreak of Nanchang uprising, and heard that the rebels had moved to Shantou, so they went to defect. When they arrived in Shantou, the uprising troops had dispersed. In the process of looking for the uprising troops, I was lucky to escape from the danger again. He was lost in happiness: where is the way out for the revolution? Where is your life direction? On his way back to Shanghai, he suddenly had the impulse to create. Based on his personal experience in the past few months, he began to write the autobiographical novel Exile.

In his novel Exile, Hong wrote that from the "4. 15" tragedy in Guangzhou until he entered Chaoshan with the uprising troops, he lost his breath and had to go into exile again. The protagonist Shen finally understood the meaning of life, strengthened his revolutionary determination and saw the ugliness and darkness of society.

Darkness, the inequality between people, therefore, to eliminate this situation must be through revolution and complete social change. Finally, Shen quietly left his family and embarked on the road of exile, "looking for eternal light for mankind"

It took Hong only one and a half months to complete this work with more than 654.38 million words. 1926 In March, Yu Dafu went to Guangdong University to teach, and Hong often listened to his classes. It is said that Hong was appreciated by Yu Dafu and they got along well. At the end of Exile, Hong met Yu Dafu who came to Shanghai. Yu Dafu not only prefaced Exile, but also recommended the manuscript to Fang Lu, the owner of Shanghai Modern Bookstore.

After the book was published by Modern Bookstore, it sold well in major cities in China and Nanyang area. The name Hong also spread like wildfire, and became a minor celebrity in Shanghai's literary world. Gradually, he was invited by the bookstore and established himself in Shanghai with his literary talent.

"Exile Trilogy" established the position of literary world.

At that time, five or six revolutionary youths from Chaoshan, such as Hong He Dai, were crowded into a small room of 10 square meters in the French Concession, and their living conditions were very difficult. Hong had to bear the economic burden of this "big family". Writing in exile opened the valve of Hong's creative passion, and he entered the peak of his creation with an extraordinary enthusiasm. Get up at 4 o'clock every morning, spread out paper and pen and start writing. By the time someone gets up at 8 o'clock, he has generally written 5000 words.

Therefore, Hong started the creation of Frontline with the first cooperation between Kuomintang and Communist Party as the background. Huo Zhiyuan, the hero of the novel, is a member of the Kuomintang Party Department. While he was busy with the revolution, he struggled in love and his private life was quite out of line. However, at the critical moment of the opposition massacre, he stepped forward. In Huo Zhiyuan's body, in fact, it embodies the common characteristics of countless revolutionary youths during the Great Revolution, and writes the trajectory of their ideological transformation from petty-bourgeois intellectuals to proletarian revolutionary fighters.

After Frontline, Hong began to write the third novel, Transformation. The background of this novel is from the ebb tide of the May 4th Movement to the Northern Expedition. Li Chuyan, the hero, is a middle school student who went back to his hometown from the city to review his lessons and prepare for the exam, but he fell in love with his widowed second sister-in-law, went back to the city to study, and fell in love with his classmate's sister. However, his father forced him to marry a village girl he didn't know. Marriage cannot be independent, and love is frustrated, which makes him feel the indifference of his family and the cruelty of society. After some repression, resentment and struggle, he finally ran away from home in the rising workers and peasants movement and embarked on the revolutionary road.

The styles of these three novels are very similar, adopting the popular model of "revolution+love" at that time. Zheng Qunhui of Hanshan Normal University believes that the contradictions caused by this "revolution+love" model in the heart and the times are true reflections of the times, and there is no need to be too demanding and accusing today; On the contrary, "Hong described these characters, and finally they all struggled out of the sink and went to the revolution, and the revolution finally defeated the sink. The unique theme of Hong deserves our high appreciation. Undoubtedly, these novels played a great role in supporting and encouraging young people who were interested in revolution at that time. " This view also confirms Hong's own words: "Although the revolution is at a low ebb, we have a pen in our hand, which can make the revolution flourish in another aspect."

As for the artistic value of Exile and other works, A Ying wrote: "Hong has a power, that is, as long as you read one or two chapters of his book, you must read it all at once." His evaluation of Hong is: "It is really rare in the modern literary world."

Later, people called exile, frontline and transformation "exile trilogy". These three novels are Hong's masterpieces, and some people call them "masterpieces of early proletarian revolutionary literature". These three novels are all based on the major events of the China Revolution, including the ebb tide from the May 4th Movement to the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the general strike in all provinces and ports, the Northern Expedition and the "4. 12" coup, which reflects the historical torrent of the great era. 1934, these three novels were banned by the Kuomintang Shanghai Special City Party Department.

Most of Hong's works were written in more than two years from the second half of 1927 to the end of 1929. In addition to the "Exile Trilogy" and some short stories, there are new poems and literary papers, totaling millions of words. At that time, Hong was praised as "an outstanding figure in emerging literature".

Elected as one of the seven members of the Standing Committee of the "Left League"

1928 1, Jiang Guangci and others initiated the establishment of Sun Society. Introduced by Yu Dafu, Hong got to know others, joined the Sun Society with Dai, and connected with the party's organizational relationship.

On May 20th of the same year, Hong, Du, Dai and others initiated the establishment of another literary society-ours. I have joined the Sun Society, why should I set up another one? Scholar Duan Congxue found that all members are not only Chaoshan people, but also members of * * *. Therefore, he believes that "our society should organize a new literary society to calm the disputes between the Sun Society and the Creation Society and establish a United front of revolutionary literature." The "preface" of the social magazine "Our Monthly" proposed to produce "Our Drums" and wrote: "Although some are not beautiful and gentle; Maybe it will destroy the so-called peace, the so-called tranquility; However, that's great enough! That voice gives bloody enlightenment to those who sympathize with us and a symbol of destruction to those who betray us! "

At that time, the controversy about "revolutionary literature" broke out among "old writers" such as Creation Society, Sun Society and Lu Xun, which divided the left-wing literary and art team. With the intervention of the Communist Party of China (CPC) people, such as Li, the internal struggle of the left-wing literary camp has come to an end, and a new progressive literary organization is brewing, which is the Chinese Left-wing Writers' Union (hereinafter referred to as the "Left-wing Writers' Union"). At the beginning of 1930, Hong participated in the preparations for the "Left-wing League". On March 2nd, 1930, the "Left Alliance" held its inaugural meeting in China University of the Arts, Le 'an Road, Shanghai. The meeting elected a Standing Committee composed of seven members, including Hong, Shen Duanxian, Feng Naichao, Lu Xun, Tian Han and Zheng.

The "Left Alliance" established the "Literature Popularization Research Association" and conducted in-depth discussions in newspapers and periodicals, making the popularization of literature and art gradually become a literary movement. Hong also put forward his own point of view: "Popularization is a very important issue in general literature. General literature, assuming that it is not understood and cared by the public, is a great loss. In order for popular literature to be understood and cared by the public, we must immediately raise the issue of' popularization'. "

Hong is known as a "comet-like prolific writer". Besides being busy with revolutionary work, Hong insisted on writing. During this period, he created short stories "On the Raft", "In the Flood", "Going Home" and novella "The Sea", all of which reflected Hong Ben's thought of literature popularization. In these works, the working people take the place of intellectuals to become the protagonists.

In particular, The Sea, which came out a month earlier than the novel, was regarded by scholar Yang Yi as "a major turning point on Hong's creative road". "Hong jumped out of the whirlpool of revolutionary romanticism in the late 1920s and began to advance to revolutionary realism in the 1930s". The protagonist of the sea is three drinkers in the southern countryside. The novel is divided into two parts, the first part is all Water Margin, which describes the economic bankruptcy of rural areas in China, the anxiety and anger of farmers, and the failure of spontaneous resistance. The second part describes that after the roar of Nancun a few years ago, farmers became masters of the country and changed the new atmosphere of the world. Yang Yi said: "From the artistic skills of The Sea to the magnificent display of history with its unique character, Hong has entered the threshold of maturity of left-wing literature."

Unfortunately, he was arrested and secretly killed.

After the establishment of the "Left League", Hong's work became busier. He often goes deep into workers and college students to do propaganda and organization work. During this period, he organized a reading meeting among college students, founded a night school for workers and attended classes in person.

By the second half of 1930, he almost completely gave up writing and devoted himself to the party's work. He worked in jiangsu provincial party committee Propaganda Department and Huxi District Committee successively. After the1931"9.18" incident, China anti-imperialist alliance, Shanghai People's Anti-Japanese Salvation Federation and other organizations were established one after another, among which the General League of China Left-wing Culture was established in 1932, and Hong also served as one of these organizations.

Hong's frequent activities attracted the attention of the Kuomintang authorities. Soon, Shanghai Shen Bao published a wanted order for Hong. This is the second wanted order for him since the Central Daily News. Facing the dangerous environment, the Communist Party of China (CPC) immediately turned it underground, and later, considering his exposed identity, it was no longer suitable to stay in Shanghai. 1February, 933, Hong was transferred to Beiping as the secretary of the Secretariat of the Plenipotentiary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beiping, responsible for managing the important documents of the Party in six provinces in North China.

1On July 26th, 933, Hong was arrested by the Kuomintang Gendarmerie because of a traitor's informer. In prison, he was bullied and seduced by the enemy and didn't reveal any party secrets. After his arrest, some progressives protested to the Kuomintang and demanded the release of Hong. His father-in-law, Qin Changwei, a famous intellectual in Chaozhou, also raised a huge sum of money, hoping to redeem him from prison. The answer is: "This man never repents and has no intention of turning back."

Finally, Hong was secretly escorted to Nanjing and was shot in Yuhuatai, Nanjing at the beginning of 1934.