Fan Jun’s commemorative article

"The bright stars in the night sky" - in memory of Mr. Fan Jun

Li Xiangping

I gently played a song in memory of the deceased " "Song of a Thousand Winds", let the melody of this song accompany me to finish writing this short article. For Mr. Fan Jun, who quietly left this noisy world, "Song of a Thousand Winds" best expresses my nostalgia. I seemed to hear him say: "Please don't stand in front of my grave and cry. I am not there, and I am not sleeping." If I don’t wake up, I am a song that never stops..."

I am busy with things I don’t know what to do every day, and I seem to have lost some sense of heartache for a long time. It was the afternoon of January 15th until I learned the news of Teacher Fan’s death. The text message sent by my colleague made me temporarily absent-minded and speechless. I know that he did not actually "die". He just turned into a thousand breezes, the sunshine shining on the white snow in winter, and the birds circling and flapping their wings in the morning light, as sung in "Song of a Thousand Winds", But I still couldn't suppress the lingering loneliness in my heart.

Mr. Fan Jun, whose ancestral home is Zhenhai, Zhejiang, was born in Shanghai in December 1930. In terms of age, he is my father. His life experience should be the amphibious characteristics of "old and new" unique to that generation, right? He rarely wrote about his primary school and middle school years in Shanghai. The adolescent experience, which has an important impact on a person's life-long personality and career choices, was almost submerged in the quiet sea of ??his private history because of his "silence". The only thing that can be guessed is that the Shanghai Mailun Middle School he attended was a church boys' school founded by the London Christian Church in England. Its principal Shen Tilan turned this middle school into an educational base for the democratic revolution in the 1930s and 1940s. , where the activities of underground party members were sheltered and many red talents were cultivated. Mr. Fan Jun's character and interests must have been gradually formed under the influence of the free atmosphere of Mailun Middle School. But this era of war and social turmoil and change only allowed him to peek for a while and then ended hastily. His flying youth soon witnessed the birth of another era. In September 1949, he was admitted to Peking University with the earliest modern democratic education he had received at Mailun Middle School. During his four years at university, the seeds of the May 4th New Culture Enlightenment Movement were sown deep in his heart and have since taken root with him in Beijing. This is probably the reason why he has chosen to do modern literature research since he went to work at the Institute of Literature in 1953, right?

When I met Mr. Fan Jun in the mid-1980s, he had been working in the Institute of Literature for nearly thirty years. Teacher Fan, who has experienced various major and minor political movements such as the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution, is not as romantic as I thought on the surface. On the contrary, he seemed to give people the impression of being unsmiling. At that time, I just came to the Institute of Literature to study for a master's degree. My teachers, Mr. He Xilai and Mr. Du Shuying, often mentioned the names of three people. One was Mr. He Qifang, who symbolized the tradition of rigorous scholarship in the Institute of Literature; the other was Mr. Luan Xun, who talked about Chinese classical aesthetics exudes the vitality of the grassland, and it seems that when progress can help, retreat can nourish energy; the third is Mr. Fan Jun. The teacher repeatedly emphasized Fan Jun's seriousness, saying that even when he spoke at a small meeting, he always wrote an outline and filled it with dense materials. We must learn this spirit well. I had not taken Teacher Fan's class at that time, but he had left a deep impression on us. He represented a style of study that was prudent and discerning. Later, I studied for a PhD with Mr. Tang Tao and met Mr. Fan Jun, whom I had admired for a long time, in the Modern Room. I remember that when we first met, he would not let us call him "teacher", but would call him by his first name. We were not used to it, so he called us "teacher" in turn. Seeing that the young man was embarrassed, he laughed like a child. In fact, he has a lot of romance and humor in his life. He is straightforward, innocent, and tired of the world's false etiquette and vain pretensions. This is his nature. However, these are often hidden in his seemingly unsmiling seriousness.

Teacher Fan said in his own words that he is "a reserved person, and has a lot of cumbersome habits in doing things. He is often hesitant, and he always repeats and procrastinates endlessly when thinking about problems and writing articles." ("On the Study of Modern Chinese Literature" "Foreword" ), this introspection can probably be confirmed by the painstaking revisions he made to every article - almost all of the articles included in his collection have traces of his repeated revisions, some of which took as long as ten years. Even for more than ten years, for example, he worked very hard on "Knowing Lao She". It took ten years to go from the speech to the written draft; and it took another five years to go from the written draft to the revised draft - everything is important nowadays. In the era of speed and competition for topics and resources, Teacher Fan's method is obviously ridiculously slow and "out of time". He is not like those gunmen who are full of ingenuity and write thousands of words. Everything is "easy". ”, On the contrary, he seems to do everything “lightly and lightly”, which may seem a bit “clumsy” or “browsy” to some people, but he does “clumsy work” not for the sake of extravagant fame or famous articles. , It’s just that we can’t indulge in thinking, studying and writing.

Everyone who knows Mr. Fan Jun knows that he is serious and pure to the point of being "broad". He spends almost more time helping others read articles every year than he spends writing articles himself. Regardless of whether it is a colleague in the institute or a graduate student, as long as an article is sent to him, he will take the trouble to read it carefully over and over again before writing his own opinions. When "Literary Review" encounters some "difficult manuscripts", It was also sent to him for review, and his academic judgments were often made carefully after extensive reading and careful consideration. Teacher Fan is well aware that academics are a public instrument for the world. He often dedicates his thoughts unreservedly to those who ask him for advice and lets others write them in articles. Once other people's results are published, he will no longer write about them. Article.

Some colleagues once regretted that he delayed his personal research in his early days by participating in the writing of the collective project "History of Modern Chinese Literature". However, just like a bug, he instead started from participating in the writing of the history of modern literature. During the experience, I deeply felt the huge impact that the transformation of Chinese society from modern to contemporary had on the establishment and evolution of the discipline of modern literature. I also had a unique insight into the "history", "thought" and "theory" of modern literature. "The academic value contained in the research. He transformed the most tedious work of writing annual academic review articles into cleaning up academic history that hides academic wisdom. He was willing to be a thankless "scavenger" to clean up the spiritual accumulation of decades. and the scholarly “Ogiasian cattle pen.” It was in these articles that he started writing in the early 1980s that resembled academic history or the history of disciplinary development that he found his own language.

He does not have a tome of masterpieces, but his academic contributions are reflected in his slow work and meticulous work. He transformed the construction of the modern literature discipline, which was restarted after 1979, from a state of unconscious clamor to a conscious academic direction; through case studies of modern literature research experts such as Wang Yao and Tang Tao, he created a unique Reflecting on the critical nature of modern literary "case studies"; with the help of writer research (such as "Knowing Lao She"), he returned to the historical scene and reinterpreted the May Fourth Movement with his rich artistic sensibility and insights from historical research. The three core issues of enlightenment spirit, old culture criticism and new culture construction are of contemporary significance. Underneath his concise and simple words, the passion of the generation since Melun Middle School surges.

At the end of the article "Knowing Lao She", he quoted the British writer Dickens's discussion about "era" in "A Tale of Two Cities" to express the complexity and contradiction of social life, and quoted Marx's "Comment on the Recent Developments in Prussia" The discussion on freedom and individuality in the Censorship Order shows the vast world and freedom of spiritual life.

He wrote:

"If we can understand the richness and complexity of social reality like Dickens, and respect the diversity and originality of spiritual labor like Marx, we can learn to accept, appreciate, and cherish 'in the sunshine' "Every drop of dew" shines with "infinite colors"", we will transcend the many biases that we have experienced in certain historical stages, and have a "more fair understanding and more scientific understanding of writers" Evaluation" (see the second volume of Fan Jun's "Collection of Modern Chinese Literature"). This is the profound revelation he gained from the study of literary history.

The "Jishan Study Case" in Huang Zongxi's "Confucianism Cases of the Ming Dynasty" writes that Liu Zongzhou was not afraid of power, defied the world and customs, and repeatedly admonished Wanli with his benevolence and righteousness, and was regarded by Wanli as "outrageous". Some senior students mentioned this matter and thought that Liu Zongzhou's "broadness" was rare. Mr. Fan Jun's integrity, aloofness and purity sometimes seem "broad". However, in today's world, "when it comes to utilitarianism, everyone is just a bit impatient." How difficult is it to be "broad" without being too impatient? This is why I feel warm and awe every time I think of Teacher Fan!

May teachers be like "thousands of breezes" and "bright stars in the night sky", making the night no longer lonely!

January 19, 2011 in Beijing

(Note: The author is a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)

Fan Jun: A true myth

Wei Jian

Deceased files

Name: Fan Jun Age: 81 years old Place of origin: Zhenhai, Zhejiang Lifetime identity: Researcher at the Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Member of the Honorary Division of the Academy of Social Sciences

On January 15, 2011, Mr. Fan Jun passed away.

This scholar trained in New China has studied modern Chinese literature at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for more than 50 years. After retirement, he was awarded "Honorary Academic Member" by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and enjoys the highest academic honor in China's humanities and social sciences. However, according to today's popular "expert" standards, Mr. Fan Jun is not even considered a mid-level "talent". He has no awards, no applications for scientific research projects, no academic monographs (only collections of papers, etc.), and not many published papers. However, almost everyone who has read Fan Jun's paper praised it.

In the spring of 1986, at the National Lao She Symposium, Mr. Fan Jun read out his handwritten essay "Understanding Lao She", and the audience was completely silent. Many of the participants and I regretted not being able to remember it and asked him when he would be able to see the transcript. He seemed uneasy and said: "The writing is not good, so I have to correct it." I waited for one year, two years... ten years! This paper has just been officially published. We are all praising the masterpiece of sword-sharpening in these ten years. But Fan Jun was still dissatisfied, and it wasn't until 2001 that another major revision was made. This is one of Fan Jun's many "myths": it took 15 years to revise a paper!

Fan Jun's "Myth" No. 2: Not a mentor. When China first established the degree system, Mr. Fan Jun could be a doctoral supervisor, but he did not apply, and he refused to become a master's supervisor until he retired. Anyone who is familiar with Fan Jun knows that he is not being modest, nor is he trying to get rid of the burden of being a mentor. He wants to do things, not fame. He volunteered to tutor many other people's master's and doctoral students, year after year. Many younger students, including myself, received his careful guidance. For more than twenty years, we private disciples have wanted to invite him to dinner, but he has not agreed once.

Fan Jun also has an even more amazing "myth".

In 2000, a piece of information spread like wildfire among my peers: An anonymous person invested 1 million yuan to establish the "Wang Yao Academic Award." We all want to know who this mysterious figure is? Many people guess that she is the daughter of Professor Wang Yao, the late president of the Chinese Modern Literature Research Association.

Two years later, Mr. Fan Jun's "Understanding Lao She" was selected as the candidate paper for the first "Wang Yao Academic Award" with the highest number of votes. Fan Jun refused, but the judges insisted on judging.

During the dispute, an insider leaked that Fan Jun was the investor! The people present were shocked! Some people said: Even if Fan Jun donates in his name, it will be enough to move us! What's more, the teacher's name is not allowed to be spoken! The speaker's voice was choked.

Unexpectedly, Fan Jun later donated 1 million yuan to the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to establish the "Qinying Literary Research Award", and also did not let others know who the donor was.

Mr. Fan Jun’s philosophy of living in poverty and enjoying happiness is also a topic that everyone praises. He didn't take a taxi when he went out, and he still took the bus until he was 80 years old. I have only seen three pieces of clothing of his: a blue polyester tunic, a white shirt, and the gray jacket in his later years. The 2 million yuan donated by Mr. Fan Jun includes almost all of his family property from his inheritance. He was frugal himself, but devoted everything he had to rewarding the research of others.

No matter in good times or bad times, Mr. Fan Jun can both "benefit himself" and "help the world". The latter means that his research results are often related to national knowledge. He has been involved in coordinating the macro-strategy of national literary research since 1953. Since 1978, he has been thinking from a high-level perspective on the study of modern Chinese literature, and has personally planned, organized and led this undertaking for more than 20 years. It is a pity that this academic leader who has "the world" in mind does not have a family and has never been married in his life. Apart from learning, he didn't have many hobbies. We mostly see him at academic conferences. Fan Jun was never seen among the tourists after the meeting. We often don't understand why he is in such a hurry to go home? There is always only one person and countless books in that home.

Everyone is always preaching the "myth" of Mr. Fan Jun, as if he is a touching Chinese figure in the field of modern Chinese literature research. What moved us first of all was his nobility of personality and the self-sacrifice behind this nobility. As a person, he is extremely strict with himself, almost to the point of being demanding. For example, I don’t know how many people care about why he doesn’t get married? He almost didn't answer. According to Fan Jun's younger brother, he didn't get married because he was afraid that his harshness would make others unbearable. How many years later did I understand how harsh Mr. Fan Jun was to me: If he couldn’t be a good husband, he shouldn’t be a good man; if he couldn’t be a good father, he shouldn’t be a good man; if he couldn’t be a good mentor, he shouldn’t be a good man...

I was in Beijing on the day Mr. Fan Jun passed away. Just after the meeting, I heard that Mr. Fan Jun was critically ill, so I rushed to his bedside in Beijing Hospital. His eyes were closed and he couldn't hear my voice. The only message I got from him was that the temperature was extremely high. Relatives and friends around him told me about Fan Jun in daily life.

Especially what they said was that during the rescue operation the day before yesterday, Mr. Fan Jun was shaking all over in pain. At this time, Mr. Fan Jun was in front of my eyes. Becoming more real and ordinary, becoming flesh and blood like us, but surpassing all living beings in terms of personality, creating an unattainable myth.

Mr. Fan Jun is unattainable, but not out of reach. Doesn’t he always tell the truth? Isn’t it just that you always put your career and others first? Isn’t it just that you don’t take advantage of the public? Isn’t that just not a mentor? Don’t you just write every article carefully? ...However, how many people can do these seemingly simple things?

This is Mr. Fan Jun: He tried his best to do things that ordinary people should do and could do but did not do. The reason for this is that he regards what people should do as a belief and sticks to it. Ordinary people think that something should be done, but once it requires sacrifice, they will not do it. Mr. Fan Jun really does what he feels he should do, no matter how big the sacrifice is. This kind of belief may be believed by ordinary people for a while, but Mr. Fan Jun can believe it for a lifetime.

For this reason, he gave up so many human pleasures, but his personality was perfect. He spent his life pursuing great love, righteousness, truth, and goodness, demonstrating the light of humanity and the dignity of human beings!

On the day when Mr. Fan Jun’s body was bid farewell, I wrote an elegiac couplet dedicated to his spirit in heaven:

No wife, no property, no monograph, no single disciple, living alone and silently Study without attachment to ordinary people's possessions

Have great love, perseverance, wisdom, thousands of private disciples with the world in mind, suffer hardships, and only guard what is left for all sentient beings

(Source of this article: Dazhong.com - Qilu Evening News)

(Note: The author is currently a distinguished professor of Shandong Normal University, director of the Institute of Language and Literature, doctoral supervisor, one of the first batch of Qilu cultural talents in Shandong Province, deputy dean of the School of Liberal Arts of Shandong Normal University, China Director of the Modern Literature Research Association, vice president of the China Guo Moruo Research Association, and executive vice president of the Shandong Chinese Modern Literature Association)