Chapter 52 21. "Winter Rain" and "Yin Weiwei" (1)

It cannot be said that I have completely lost my literary "inspiration" in this passage. In the late autumn and early winter of 1956, I published a short story, and in the early spring of 1957, I wrote "Yin Weiwei". Based on a real experience of mine.In early winter, the rain gradually turned into graupel, low air pressure, and bad weather.The opening line of my novel is "This year's weather is hell".The bus, the crowd, the uncivilized pushing and collision, the gloomy mood.A Chekhovian resentment similar to "What a savage life..." - of course the same sentence does not appear.At this time, two brothers and sisters painted their fingers on the mist on the window glass, and the painting was very good, which made the vulgar passengers smile and a little beautiful light appeared.

There is Chekhov here, and there is Tagore: regard children as angels, regard childlike innocence as a good medicine, and pursue a pure, happy, baby-like back to basics.Perhaps in retrospect, Lao Tzu was among them, "Can you be like a baby?" I write concisely and naturally.It is a prose poem flowing from the heart.Only two thousand words were used.Write it in one breath, without any effort.I worked hard to compile a special issue of short stories in the issue of "People's Literature" at the end of the year, took two weeks, and published it.It is estimated that other manuscripts were replaced.

Comrade Liu Libang, the leader of the former Communist Youth League Committee, forwarded a letter from readers. He was very moved by this article, and talked about talent, Chekhov, and so on.Liu Libang also specifically asked me not to be proud after reading such a letter. There are also some literary friends who praised this article and said: "Why is there a touch of sadness in your works?" I'm afraid this is also true. Between my obsession with literature and my work in real life, which I don't ignore or be particularly confused about, there is some kind of disharmony, dissonance, some kind of division and balance that is difficult to maintain.At this time, experience and identity, life and people, simply put, Wang Meng, a 53-kilogram guy, can no longer hold down literature. I can't hold my own literature car. The direction of surrealization such as transformation, fantasy, warmth, marginalization and narcissism is rolling away.

During the period of criticizing me, W curled his lips and talked about this novel, and said in a soft voice: "How come the two children make the whole car warm and bright as soon as they paint, it's just inexplicable and illusory." There is no way, W is a college student, he is in charge of the propaganda work of the Communist Youth League Committee, and he is a person who loves reading, including literature and art books. It wasn’t until 1980, when I went to the United States for the first time, that I met Dr. David Arkush, a sinologist. In addition to showing me his master’s thesis “On the Newcomers to Wang Meng’s Organizational Department” he wrote when he was at Harvard University, he also read from The English translation copied by the library was given to me. The English manuscript was published in 1961 by a Czech foreign literary journal.At that time, I was engaged in non-staple food production in Sanlezhuang.

As for "Yin Weiwei", it was written in the early spring of 1957, and I had a cold for a few days.First Zhang Xian, and later some newspaper editors came to read it.Thanks to Chairman Mao's intervention, I suddenly almost became a darling from the literary urchin.A female editor said to me, first, we read your work (referring to "Group"), we thought you were so serious and majestic, but when we met, we realized that Wang Meng is actually quite good. "Another female editor saw that I was ill, so she bought a box of "Lingqiao Jiedu Pills" at the entrance of the alley without further ado.

When I was ill, I read Lu Xun.I suddenly thought of some women among my relatives and friends. They used to be underground party members, league members, and powerful figures in the student movement. In recent years, most of them got married and had children.I wrote a first-person pronoun "I", and went to visit my old classmate Yin Weiwei, and found that Yin's life was not bright, and even sold Bai Juyi's poem "Xiangshan Collection" that she specialized in in college to a junk collector.Yin is busy with the baby, and the room is full of diapers.Yin's attitude towards the nanny is also extremely bad.At the end, "I" said goodbye without eating. Yin Weiwei seemed to be moved when she said goodbye, and said to "me": "It's windy, put up your coat collar!"

There are Chekhov and Lu Xun, such as "On the Restaurant".During this period of time, I like Qu Yuan's poems: "What is the fragrant grass in the past, but now it is Xiao Ai? It has other reasons, and there is no harm in repairing..." Then there is Qu Yuan here.Moreover, there is also Jia Baoyu here, Baoyu always sighs that a good-looking girl becomes another person as soon as she gets married. Moreover, here is Fadeyev and the Young Guard.In the second draft of the book, which was revised according to Stalin's opinion, an old party member, Surga, went to the home of his young girlfriend, Yelishaveta Alexeyevna, whom he had not seen for many years. Wanting to get Li Sha's help, Ye Lisha complained to the authorities.Su Erjianai defected to Fuming, another party member who said everything was fine, but was betrayed by Fuming.According to Stalin's instructions, the author needs to explain convincingly why the enemy-occupied area relies on a group of children to fight against the German invaders.But the meeting between Su Erjia and Ye Lisha is written very movingly, the ruthlessness of time, the wear and tear of life, the strangeness of the unmarried former lover, the dizzy old eyes in difficult times, expectation and disappointment, wrong disappointment and even more wrong self Throwing in a net is so moving.I obviously took Fadeyev’s approach when I wrote about old friends—the former lovers who met after many years.

This article is written shallowly and a bit naively.Initially, I gave a supplement to the Beijing Daily.Later, editor-in-charge Xin Daming returned the proof, saying that editor-in-chief Zhou You decided not to use it at the last minute.The manuscript proves that the responsible editor followed orders and made many changes, such as changing Yin Weiwei from having two children to one child—by the way, the one-child family planning policy had not yet been implemented at that time.I forwarded it to "People's Literature", and the editor of "People's Literature" restored all the things that were changed in "Beijing Daily" to their original state.Then during the anti-rightist climax, I called a stop myself.Then when the anti-rightist upsurge was about to pass, I voluntarily handed over the manuscript that had been messed up by the editors.