Chapter 6 The beginning of the fourth section of potential writing: "Peking Dormitory at 10 o'clock on May 30th"

This is a curious hand-written essay dated May 30, 1949, as the title indicates.From the perspective of literary history, the curtain of contemporary literature has not yet officially opened, but the city of Beiping (Beijing) has already gathered literary and art workers from all over the country, and people are happily preparing for the first literary congress.However, Shen Congwen, the representative writer of Beijing School literature in the 1930s and the author of "Xiang Xing San Ji", fell into a very confused spiritual crisis.From the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the relationship between Shen Congwen and the left-wing political forces continued to deteriorate. In 1948, Guo Moruo published "Condemnation of Reactionary Literature and Art" and insulted him in a liquidation tone that "he has always been consciously active as a reactionary". 15. Political dark clouds weighed heavily on his mind, destroying his weak but sensitive nervous system.More than forty years later, the editor of "Congwen Family Letters", which published Shen Congwen's various written materials at that time, said: "In 1949, Shen Congwen, who was preparing to 'write' ten or twenty literary works, terminated his work. The literary career also stepped down from the podium of the Chinese Department of Peking University. Due to the interaction of internal and external factors, he fell into a mental disorder in January. The news spread to friends in Tsinghua University who had just been liberated. His sincere care failed to relieve his illness, and he has been ill for a long time..." 16 This "Dormitory in Peking at 10:00 on May 30" 17 is one of the written materials left at that time.

Although this note is only the author's "babbling and raving" during his illness, it symbolically records another mental state of intellectuals in an era of great transformation.Shen Congwen, who was ill, keenly felt the changes of the times: "The world is moving, everything is moving", but what he really panicked was not the changes in the world itself, but that he was thrown out of the trajectory during these changes: "I seem to Completely isolated from the world, I seem to be cut off from a group of sorrows and joys", "I see everything statically and compassionately, but I have no part, no part in everything." activities", that's why he has no hostility or wariness towards this changing era, nor is he just watching it with prudence, but wants to care for it and participate in it with enthusiasm, so he feels that he is excluded from the era. The situation is full of fear and grievance.How sober and realistic this feeling is, where is there the slightest "nervous disorder"?So he declared loudly: "I'm not crazy"!He has to go further and repeatedly ask: "Why?"Although the author is ill, his words are still full of power. After reading this note, a kind and cowardly soul appears transparently before the readers. Does such a weak and beautiful life exist?

Although this is a very random note, its style is clearly branded with Shen Congwen's writing characteristics: loose writing, rich connotation, and rhythmic language.Shen Congwen has a very high ability to distinguish music. He wrote the article starting from "Sounds in the Stillness" and wrote about various sounds: the sound of drums in the distance (illusion), the sound of the wings of a stove horse, the sound of a child snoring, The sound of classical music on the radio... Each different sound evokes different emotional changes in him, which are quite delicate.In a short space, he inserted three narrative texts of different time dimensions: historical memories, realistic lyricism and fantasy for the future, which contained three women: Ding Ling in history, Zhang Zhaohe in real life, and Cui Cui in the hallucination.It is meaningful that he first elicited Ding Ling's story from an old photo.When they were young, Shen Congwen and Ding Ling were very good friends. Although they took different paths, after Ding Ling's husband Hu Yepin died, he took the risk to escort Ding Ling and her orphan back to their hometown, which can be said to be courageous and insightful. ; When Ding Ling was secretly arrested by the Kuomintang government, he published a long prose "Remembering Ding Ling" to arouse the public's attention to the missing, which can be said to be affectionate and righteous.Nineteen years have passed, and Ding Ling has become a literary official and influential figure in the new era. The orphan who was escorted back then has grown up, but he is "dissociated from the group by his own madness". How mocking is history?For his wife Zhang Zhaohe who shared weal and woe, Shen Congwen was full of gratitude and guilt.When his thoughts returned to the reality from the history in the photos, he used two sentences to describe his family: "Zhaohe Jiangou is upright, and the children know how to respect and love themselves". These two sentences actually have a meaning , the latter sentence further sets off the previous sentence of Zhaohe's integrity and good teaching.Seeing that such a happy family sleeping warmly will be destroyed because of him, his fear and despair can be imagined, and the fluttering and chirping of the little stove horse in the quiet night seems to exaggerate this desperate psychology.In the end, Shen Congwen thought of his hometown again—the place he always haunted in his dreams. After experiencing loneliness and cold reception in the social changes, this sincere singer in the folk world of Xiangxi instinctively wanted to return to the embrace of the land. Belongs to that piece of plain land.Cuicui may be a character in his novels, or the life prototype of an artistic character, or it may be a cultural fantasy in the folk world of his hometown, symbolizing the writer's ideal of retiring to the folk.It is worth noting that the writer uses the future tense (Dragon Boat Festival is coming) rather than the past tense when describing his hometown, implying the writer's conscious choice of the future path: Although he did not return to the folks in western Hunan, he spent half his life lingering around Due to the organization of folk culture and historical museums, he consciously stayed away from the noisy literary world and society, and fulfilled his duties as an intellectual in his folk positions.

If it is said that Lu Xun opened the curtain of modern Chinese literature with a breakthrough, announced the fearless spirit of modern intellectuals who completely broke with tradition, and established a modern literary tradition characterized by enlightenment, then Shen Congwen’s low-key new " "A Madman's Diary" is also of great significance in the history of literature after the 1950s.Although it was impossible for this work to be published or circulated at the time, from the perspective of literary history, there has always been an undercurrent of creation looming in the history of contemporary literature. Personal writing: diaries, letters, notes, poems, and conscious literary creations, which truly express their feelings and thoughts about the times.These words are more authentic and beautiful than the published works at that time, so they are more valuable in literary history from today's point of view.Shen Congwen's notes should be the beginning of this stream of latent writing. [[Comment:]]

1 Quoted from Zhou Enlai's "Political Report at the National Congress of Literary and Artistic Workers of China", collected in "Selected Materials of Literary Movement" Volume 5, "Reference Materials of Modern Literature History" published by Shanghai Education Publishing House, 1979 edition, No. 640 Page. 2 Quoted from Zhou Yang's "New People's Literature and Art", ibid., p. 684. 3 Quoted from "Chairman Mao's Speech", ibid., p. 637. 4 Quoted from Qian Liqun's "1948: The Mystery of Heaven and Earth", "Century Chinese Literature Department" published by Shandong Education Publishing House, 1998 edition, p. 33.

5 Quoted from Mao Zedong's "Letter Concerning the Research Issues of A Dream of Red Mansions", collected in Volume 5 of Selected Works of Mao Zedong, People's Publishing House, 1977 edition, p. 134. 6 Refer to Hong Zicheng's "1956: The Era of Hundred Flowers", "A Century of Chinese Literature" published by Shandong Education Publishing House, 1998 edition, p. 12. 7 See Wu Dingyu's "Scholar's Soul--Chen Yinke's Biography", Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House's "Century Review" series, 1997 edition, p. 188.

8 Quoted from [Japan] Hiroshi Sakai, "Reading Ba Jin--The 60 Years of the Critics of the Critics Who Go Against Their Wishes", collected in "Ba Jin's World" Oriental Publishing House, 1996 edition, p. 197. 9. Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3 of "Wu Ming Shu" were published in the late 1940s. Since the 1950s, Wu Ming lived in seclusion in Hangzhou and continued to write. In the 1980s, the whole book was published in Taiwan one after another. 10 Quoted from Hong Zicheng, Liu Denghan, "New History of Contemporary Chinese Poetry", People's Literature Publishing House, 1994 edition, p. 23.

11 "Time Has Begun" includes five movements. The first movement "Ode to Joy" was first published in "People's Daily" on November 20, 1949, and the second movement "Praise of Glory" was first published in "Tianjin Daily" on January 6, 1950. , the third movement was not completed at that time, and only a few fragments were published. The fourth movement (later renamed "Heroes Spectrum") was first published by Beijing Tianxia Book Company in March 1950.The fifth movement "Another Ode to Joy" (later renamed "Ode to Victory") was first published in Tianjin Daily on January 27, 1950. In the 1980s, Hu Feng revised and supplemented the whole poem and published it officially.This textbook is based on the "Complete Compilation of Hu Fengshi", Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 1992 edition.

12 Quoted from Xiao Kai's "Several Issues on the United Front of Literature and Art", contained in the second series of "Popular Literature and Art Series". 13 Quoted from Lu Yuan and Niu Han Dialogue Records, collected in "Complete Compilation of Hu Feng Poems", Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 1992 edition, p. 776. 14 "The Story of Auschwitz" was first published in the first issue of the fifth volume of "Fiction" (February 1951). 15 Quoted from Guo Moruo's "Condemnation of Reactionary Literature and Art", collected in "Selected Literature and Art Movement Historical Materials" Volume 5, Shanghai Education Press, 1997 edition, p. 617.

16 Quoted from "Cong Wen Family Letters--Cong Wen Zhaohe Letters Selection", edited by Shen Huchu, "Fire Phoenix Library" published by Far East Publishing House, 1996 edition, p. 145. 17 "Leaving Beiping Dormitory on May 30th" was not published at first, but it was first published in "Cong Wen Family Letters - Selected Letters from Wen Zhaohe", Far East Publishing House, 1996 edition.