Old things in the south

Chapter 83 Shen Congwen and His Works
Shen Congwen said at the beginning of the inscription of "Border Town":
I have an indescribable love for farmers and soldiers, and this feeling can be seen everywhere in all my works.I never deny this feeling.I grew up in a small town like the one described in the works. My grandfather, father, and brothers are all in the military;From the side of the world I have come into contact with, I will describe their love, hatred, sorrow and joy, even if this pen is clumsy, or it will not go too far from the topic.Because they are upright and honest, some aspects of their lives are extremely great, some aspects are extremely ordinary, some aspects are extremely beautiful, and some aspects are extremely trivial-when I write them, in order to make them more human and more human, Naturally, I will write down honestly. ...

Shen Congwen was born in 1902 in a farming family in western Hunan, China. As he himself said, he was also a soldier, but he did not spend his entire life in the military like other members of his family.Before he started his writing career, he served as a soldier in the local army in Hunan.Regarding the process, background and influence of his writing, Mr. Xia Zhiqing has a chapter on Shen Congwen in his English book "History of Modern Chinese Fiction", which is briefly translated below:
Shen Congwen only had the ambition to study in Beijing when he was 20 years old. Before that, he had absolutely no exposure to the side of China influenced by Western civilization.He was born in 1902 in a small city at the junction of western Hunan and Sichuan and Guizhou, and his background belonged to an official family.His grandfather was an official in Guizhou, and his father also served in the army all his life.He lived with his father in Beijing when he was a child, and the family discipline seemed to be not too strict. He often skipped school, went to the wild to enjoy the wonders of nature or the streets to watch the vicissitudes of life.He once said in his autobiography: "I wandered all day in the mountains and in the orchard, watching, listening, and smelling...."

When he was 13 years old, he was sent to a military school according to family tradition, where he did not learn much military knowledge, but became interested in those military masters who wield guns and knives in old Chinese novels.Two years later, he was sent to serve in the barracks. In sixteen months, he had witnessed seven hundred beheadings and was transferred to many places.Later, he worked as the secretary of the government, a tax collector, and also worked in the newspaper office.

During this period of constant movement on land and water, he met all kinds of people, including officials, bandits, prostitutes, and boatmen.These characters later appeared in his novels.The life of this period is very important for his later writing career, because it provides him with rich and complex life experience; but more importantly, it establishes his concept of facts and history.

Shen Congwen did not fail to enjoy luck and good friends in his wandering life, which helped him build up his ambition to engage in literature.A set of classical Chinese novels translated by Lin Shu gave him countless similar imaginations, and a few Shanghai newspapers he came across by chance opened his eyes even more, knowing that there was a new China that he knew nothing about.When he arrived in Beijing in 1922, he made some writer friends, and they introduced to him the new books and newspapers after the May Fourth Movement.He had practiced calligraphy when he was in the army, and with the help of a "Ci Yuan", he had read a lot of ancient Chinese and old poems, but this was the first time he had come into contact with new ideas and new literature.When he wanted to study in Beijing, he thought about it for four days before resigning from his employer. Unexpectedly, the owner appreciated his ambition and gave him financial assistance.This outstanding and prolific modern Chinese writer started his pen and ink career in this way until 1949.

After two years of hard work in Beijing, Shen Congwen began to attract attention and was finally appreciated by British and American literati Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo and Chen Yuan. , "Crescent Magazine" published works.On the surface, it seems that there is really no similarity between these Western-educated scholars and professors and this young countryman who can't even speak a word of English. In fact, they have an intellectual affinity.When "Leftist" fallacies were rampant and scholars of the Crescent School came out to defend their literary positions, Shen Congwen immediately became an important member of them, because although these scholars and professors had profound theories and gorgeous poetic talents, On the one hand, apart from Ling Shuhua, no one in their circle can compete with those from the Creation Society.At the same time, they valued Shen Congwen not only for his writing ability, but also for his Chinese-based realism, which they believed could correct the radical arguments of the time.Facts proved that their vision was indeed good. Later, Hu Shi became more and more enthusiastic about history and politics, Xu Zhimo suffered misfortune in a plane crash, Chen Yuan more or less withdrew from the literary world, and finally Shen Congwen became the only important one. A role model shows calmness in art and integrity in wisdom.

Shen Congwen, a self-taught writer, never thought that the task of literary criticism would fall on him.He has written novels in various styles. "Leftist" people initially saw his eccentric stubbornness, obscure consciousness, and gradually formed unique style, and only dismissed him as a prolific, utopian, and boring literati. By 1934, he edited "Ta Kung Pao Literary Supplement", " "Left" people began to regard him as the central figure of right-wing activities, and later they often used him as the object of ridicule, and even said that he was a representative of the Kuomintang's imperial literature.At this time, Shen Congwen dealt with those attacks with arrogance and contempt, and he always expressed his unwavering belief in the attitude of a pure artist.His thoughts are somewhat Taoist, and he often describes those rural savages who have not been baptized by civilization, and often have pure feelings, satisfied happiness and amazing wisdom.

Xia Zhiqing said above that Shen Congwen’s thought has the color of Taoism. In the same article, he also quoted a passage in Chapter 10 of Shen Congwen’s novel "Fengzi". Confessions of repentance to the chief.The confession probably meant that the chief told the visitor the day before that there must be a god here, and the visitor still had some doubts, but now he fully understands.He has always regarded himself as a modern person who seeks the truth and rejects superstition. He never cares about monks and temples, and regards them as dismissive as those good men and women who pray to God and worship Buddha.From a philosophical point of view, he believes that although the term God has been closely related to human beings in history, it has been degraded by modern civilization and can no longer exist.In the city, God has become a symbol of deceit, only recognizing people's stupidity, covering up their cruelty, and increasing their ugliness.But after watching their ceremony just now, he feels that God still exists as before, but His majesty and beauty can only be revealed under certain circumstances, that is to say, it must be supported by human emotions, God can exist only with the backdrop of the pastoral environment, and can add beauty to human life.So what he saw just now was not just a ritual of thanking God and praying for blessings, but an indescribably perfect and great drama, with poetry, drama, music, and the presence of God.Sounds and colours, light and shadows weave into a splendid field play, full of gods.

Xia Zhiqing believes that Shen Congwen’s use of the confessions of the characters in the novel is actually a confession of the author’s religious views. Let’s translate Xia’s original text again:

This simple and wise statement, as a modern writer's religious view, is really an amazing contrast compared with other contemporary writers who emphasize utilitarian materialism.Shen Congwen does not believe that there is an inconceivable God, he just believes that religious imagination is extremely important, and it is the only way to restore the integrity of modern social life.In this respect, he and Yeats have very close opinions. They both believe that in the cracks of modern material civilization, we should pay special attention to morality, and establish an orderly life that is in harmony with nature and God, so that human beings have the characteristics of animals. Graceful and proud, not cunning and greedy.Shen Congwen, like other writers at the time, absolutely hated the tedious and corrupt life of the aristocrats, but he was different from them in that he also hated the narrow daydream of Utopia, which, if realized, would be tantamount to putting God in human life. Cover up.

With supreme piety, he puts his beliefs on the remote villages and feudal system in ancient China that have not yet been commercialized or modernized. Under the somewhat dirty and even weird appearance, he often finds touching loyalty and natural honesty Converged source of life.But he is not a primitivist, much less a sentimentalist, trying to provide some charming atmosphere of ancient regions to resist the tendency of modernization.Although some of his various novels can be called idyllic, in fact his starting point is the awakening of modernization. He has a strong idea that if some traditional situations are not regarded as good and stubborn, China (even the all over the world) will become ever more brutal and barbaric.Therefore, Shen Congwen's pastoral style is really a moral concept. Like Wordsworth, Yeats, Faulkner, etc., he is issuing an urgent appeal to modern people.

After Shen Congwen started his writing career, he can be said to be a pure writer. Most of his works, whether novels or prose, describe the lives of soldiers, local customs, and innocent love stories of children in rural areas. It is full of the strong local flavor of his hometown in Xiangxi.His novels include "Border Town", "The Love of God and Witch", "The Long River" and so on; short story collections include "Ajin", "Dark Night", "Spring", "Spring Lantern Collection", "Black Phoenix Collection" and so on. ", "Small Scenery under the Moon", etc.; others include "Xiangxi Sanji", "Congwen Autobiography", "Waste Mail Storage" and so on.

(End of this chapter)