Wang Gan: Why was Wang Zengqi, a literary master, obscured?

Why is the literary master Wang Zengqi obscured

We have always called for the master and lamented his absence. But sometimes we tend to ignore the existence of the master, especially when the master is around us, we will be selectively color blind. There is a writer who has been dead for eighteen years. His name has been repeatedly mentioned by readers, and his works have been reprinted year after year, even more than when he was alive. We suddenly realized that a master was around us, but we ignored him and hid him in the snow.

He is Wang Zengqi.

Looking at the history of contemporary literature, his position is somewhat awkward. Outside the trend and the special chapter, he is often in the "You You" category. "You You" is often dispensable, marginal and suffix in the compilation of literary history. In short, such a master has been obscured.

why was Wang Zengqi covered up? It has its realistic rationality. Throughout these years, writers who have been popular are often stepping on "points", which has aroused people's attention and onlookers. So what is this "point" and how is it formed?

The "point" of China literature is composed of two vertical and horizontal value benchmarks. The ordinate is the traditional value of revolutionary literature that has been followed for a long time, and the abscissa is the foreign literary standard. Before 1978, this foreign standard was composed of the literary tradition of the former Soviet Union, with a little Russian literary tradition, such as "a mirror of the Russian revolution" affirmed by Lenin. However, after 1978, foreign standards focused on European and American modernist literary systems. Wang Zengqi's works are just outside these two value benchmarks.

let's start with the revolutionary literary tradition. This tradition has been formed in Lu Xun's era, which is "obedience literature". In the preface to Scream, Lu Xun clearly proposed to obey orders and follow the orders of pioneers. After that, the new literary tradition gradually blunted the shouting spirit and fighting spirit of "obedience literature", and gradually evolved into cooperation literature, politics, policies and sports, which began to develop to the extreme in the 196s and finally became the so-called "conspiracy literature". After the reform and opening up, there have been "scar literature", "reflection literature" and "reform literature" in the literature of the new period. These thoughts have played a huge role in the historical process, but Wang Zengqi's creation naturally can't match these major literary thoughts, so there is the feeling that "my work can't make headlines". Wang Zengqi had a clear understanding of his works in the value system at that time. He said my work couldn't make the headlines. Headlines are the core of value in China literary periodicals. "My works are not closely integrated with politics", "It is not possible to become the mainstream", "My works and some of my opinions are probably not very popular" and "I have maintained a detached relationship with literature for more than 3 years", which just explains why Wang Zengqi is underestimated in the literary world. In the article "Two or Three Events of Wang Zengqi", northern Jiangsu once described a past event between Wang Zengqi and Lin Jinlan:

Cheng Ying accompanied Wang and Lin to eat lobster at a food stall near Xin 'an River in the evening. Halfway through the beer, Lin suddenly said, "Xiao Cheng, I heard that one of your novels will be published in Flower City?"

Cheng Ying said, "Yes." Lin said: "Flower City is good." After a pause, he said, "If you write another one carefully, I will give you a headline in Beijing Literature."

Wang put down his glass and looked at Lin: "Are you vulgar? Do you have to make headlines? " Lin looked at Wang with shining eyes and smiled.

Wang said, "I can't make headlines in my novels, and sometimes it's the last one."

When talking about Wang Zengqi's works, Ye Zhaoyan said an interesting passage: "If Wang Zengqi's novels suddenly become popular, the ending will be completely different. Young people with rebellious mentality will not easily take an old writer who is not young as a comrade. Fortunately, for a period of time, Wang Zengqi did not belong to the mainstream literature. He was obviously an alternative, an old urchin with youthful breath. Although he was completely different from young people, he found * * * in disdaining the mainstream. The literary world is very sophisticated. On the one hand, it is conservative, overbearing, exclusive and even vulgar. On the other hand, it will also have it both ways, improvise, often absorb some fresh blood, and reshape its image through recruitment and adaptation. Undoubtedly, Wang Zengqi quickly got the love of young people, and this love can be described as love. " Wang Zengqi disdains the mainstream, and the mainstream naturally disdains him. It is natural that he is placed in an awkward position in the history of literature.

This is also the first reason why the evaluation of Wang Zengqi in the current literary history is too low. The former Soviet Union model followed by the judging rules of literary history in the traditional context of revolutionary literature simply means that political standards are the first and artistic standards are the second. That is to say, the artistic value of a work is measured by the value of the revolution. Wang Zengqi, who can't make headlines, naturally finds it difficult to occupy an important position in the history of literature. Wang Zengqi can easily be classified into the category of leisure and indifference, easily interacting with Lin Yutang, Liang Shiqiu and Zhou Zuoren, and can only be regarded as a second-rate literature.

For a long time, the criteria for judging new literature have relied on overseas standards. This overseas standard is the standard upheld by the literary value system of the former Soviet Union and the value system of western literature, especially modernist literature, and the sinologist evaluation system derived from it. The evaluation system of sinologists understands China's literary works through translation. Wang Zengqi happens to be one of the most difficult writers in China to translate. The China flavor and Chinese culture permeated in his works are reflected by his language essence. Translation just filters out this essence. If Wang Zengqi's novels are changed into another language, it will be difficult to convey the charm, and Wang Zengqi's novels are not very competitive at the story level. Because what Wang Zengqi flatters is that "writing novels is writing languages". The loss of language caused by translation is tantamount to drawing salary from the bottom of the pot. However, Wang Zengqi has no position in these two standards, and is in a free state. According to the red standards of the former Soviet Union, Wang Zengqi's works are undoubtedly gray.

why did the upsurge of western modernism since the new period in p>1978 push Wang Zengqi to the edge?

This should start with Wang Zengqi's aesthetic interest. Undoubtedly, Wang Zengqi was greatly influenced by western modernist literature, but Wang Zengqi's favorite writer happened to be Azorin, who was not sought after in the domestic modernist upsurge. He wrote "Azorin is eccentric", saying that "Azorin is a writer I have worshipped all my life", and in "Talking about Style", he said of Azorin: "He is a thoughtful, recalling and contemplative writer. He is especially good at describing quietness, describing the subtle psychological changes of characters in quiet memories. The drama of his novels is imperceptible. His' stream of consciousness' is Ming Che's, covered with cool shadows, not miscellaneous and chaotic. The enthusiasm is bleak, and the seclusion of joining the WTO. " In the 198s, modernist school, which was generally regarded as noisy, decadent, crazy, without punctuation, rebellious and unruly, was filled with sediment. From the popularity of two novels called "Modernist School" at that time, we can see that it is chaotic, miscellaneous and hot, and its purpose is not quiet. Later, the Latin American literature craze triggered by One Hundred Years of Solitude, the kind of magic and magic, and the political suffering and national anxiety of Latin American land mixed with magic and magic, seem to be difficult to achieve in Wang Zengqi's works.

The influence of Spanish writer Azorin, whom Wang Zengqi admired, in China is far from being compared with those modernist stars. This Spanish writer, born in 1875 and died in 1966, was translated as "A Zuo Lin" during the Republic of China. Dai Wangshu and Xu Xiacun jointly translated his "The fiancee of Cervantes", Bian Zhilin translated "The Collection of A Zuo Lin", and He Qifang claimed to have been influenced by A Zuo Lin when writing "Dream of Painting". Even so, Azorin is not a resounding name among foreign writers translated in China, and many people who study modern literature don't know much about it. So far, about 2 papers and essays about him have been translated into Chinese. Azorin's cold reception in China shows that it is understandable that Wang Zengqi was in a corner for quite some time. Imagine that without Tagore's great influence in China, how could Bing Xin have a lofty position in the history of modern literature?

it is not difficult to understand that Wang Zengqi is divorced from the above two literary value systems and is not in the excitement of literary thoughts. Now his slow and persistent enthusiasm for readers and writers shows that the literary world is slowly fading away from impetuousness, showing its original shape with exaggeration, returning to the normal state with distortion, and emitting light under cover. When China literature returned to rationality and the self-confidence of national culture was re-established, Wang Zengqi began to release charming but not scorching light.

Wang Zengqi's brilliance comes from his unique value that no one can replace. Wang Zengqi's value lies in the connection between modern literature and contemporary literature in China. The gap between modern and contemporary literature is caused by history. Writers in the history of modern literature rarely have excellent works after the founding of the People's Republic of China. There are many reasons, some of them have lost their right to write, and some have lost their writing personality and artistic edge in order to cooperate. Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, Cao Yu and other masters have the possibility of writing, but they are not good in art, and Lao She's only classic, Teahouse, was prepared to be discarded as waste according to the standards at that time. Thanks to Jiao Juyin's master's eye for pearls, an accident of losing classics was avoided. The writers who appeared after the founding of the People's Republic of China deliberately drew a clear line with the May 4th literature in the context, so there is a gap between contemporary literature and modern literature. Wang Zengqi is the person who bridged this gap, not only writing across two eras, but more importantly, Wang Zengqi seamlessly connected the two eras, unlike other writers who wrote different articles in the two eras. In his early years, "Famous Chicken and Duck" and "Three Friends in Cold Years" were put together, which were the same Wang Zengqi, unlike "Goddess" and "Song Collection", which were two completely different Guo Moruo. The most significant thing is that Wang Zengqi also revised and re-published his early works, such as Yi Bing, which on the one hand shows his artistic Excellence, and at the same time shows that he is willing to effectively sew modern literature and contemporary literature. This stitching is not speech, but his own writing.

Now people find that Wang Zengqi was influenced not only by Mr. Shen Congwen, whom he respected, but also by the ruined name of another marginalized writer during the May 4th Movement. Fei Ming is a stylist, but his situation in the history of modern literature is not only inferior to that of Shen Congwen, but also inferior to the second-rate mentioned above. However, Fei Ming's pursuit of novel art and exploration of Chinese language potential should not be ignored. It is precisely because of Wang Zengqi's elegant and lasting existence that Fei Ming's name has not been abolished, that his works have been picked up again, and that it is possible to re-evaluate and understand him in the history of literature. This is the best inheritance and publicity of the history of modern literature. In the book Anxiety of Influence, Bloom once said that it is not the works of predecessors that illuminate future generations, but the light of future generations illuminates the predecessors. Wang Zengqi used his works to re-illuminate Shen Congwen, Fei Ming, and the corner that was often covered in the history of literature.

People often say that Wang Zengqi was influenced by Shen Congwen, but few people realize that "being blue is better than being blue". In terms of the richness and maturity of his works, Wang Zengqi has expanded and extended Shen Congwen's aesthetic spirit to a new peak. Shen Congwen's value lies in his lyrical description of the countryside and his narrative attitude of abandoning ideology. He drew nutrition from Merimee, Turgenev and other classical writers and created a precedent for China's custom novels. Wang Zengqi succeeded in inheriting the teacher's narrative attitude of downplaying ideology and the lyrical spirit of poeticization, customs and prose, but Wang Zengqi expanded Shen Congwen's perspective from the countryside to the market, which was a great pioneering work. Generally speaking, the description of the countryside tends to be lyrical and poetic. In European literary traditions and Russian literary superstars, there is already a huge "database" for the poetic description of the countryside. In China's literary tradition, although there is no concept of the countryside, China's pastoral poems, the landscape travel notes and hermit prose derived from them also have a profound traditional accumulation for the poetic description and poetic imagination of the countryside. For the common people, China literature is rarely described, and even less poetic. For example, The Water Margin, as China's first novel describing the market in all directions, has made remarkable achievements. However, it is difficult to describe the streets in Water Margin poetically, because compared with rural life, the street life has too much fireworks and too much secular flavor. But the poetry of life is everywhere. People often say that it is not the lack of poetry in life, but the lack of eyes to find poetry. Wang Zengqi has such eyes that he can find poetry, and he can find poetic existence everywhere in his life. When many people write about Wang Zengqi's impression, they will mention his eyes that are still full of childlike interest and watery in his later years. The eyes are the externalization of the mind. Wang Zengqi's bright, childlike eyes made him discover poetry that most people ignored or disapproved of in his life. Topics with rural life, such as Notes on the Great Nao and Taking the Ring, will naturally be full of poetry. Of course, in Wang Zengqi's works with similar themes, the spirituality and humanity poetry achieved by these two poems are unmatched by contemporary writers. In the novels with pure street themes such as Three Friends at the Age of Cold, Migration, and Three Chens in Hometown, Wang Zengqi lets poetry moisten things silently and subtly into every corner of daily life. Of course, some people may say that the description of hometown life is easy to bring emotional beautification agent of memory and recollection, and it is easy to make old people and old things in the past produce warm and even poetic light, because hometown is the starting point and destination of people's hearts. But when you open Wang Zengqi's works with Beijing, Zhangjiakou, Kunming and Shanghai as the background, you still feel the irresistible human feelings and daily beauty. It is reasonable that Wang Zengqi can be loved by readers of different cultural levels and regions. Market, in Wang Zengqi's works, has gained poetry and the same status in literary life, which is no longer synonymous with secularity, but the embodiment of human value. Wang Zengqi himself realized that the value of this kind of street novels lies in the value of "people". He said, "Street novels have no epics, but they are all trivial things. There is no' hero' in the' street novel', but all of them are extremely ordinary people. "Street novels" are all "people". There are a lot of people. How many cities and citizens are there in China? They are also human beings. Since they are people, we should look at them and observe, think and express their lives from the perspective of' people'. " Unfortunately, such literary creation value has been ignored for too long.

As far as language is concerned, Shen Congwen has achieved perfection, and his narrative language and character language are so precise and natural. However, it is not difficult to see that Shen Congwen's novel language obviously bears traces since the new literature, which is the style of western novels, which of course causes the style of new literature to form a certain "isomorphism" with the style of translation. During the initial period of vernacular Chinese, the writing of new literature will naturally subconsciously accept the influence of translation style, such as Lu