Chapter 24 Appendix: Q&A during illness

Time: Afternoon on March 9, 1991; Location: White Feather Study; Reporter: Comrade Bai Yu, you have won the Mao Dun Literature Award this year. The leaders of the newspaper office and comrades have entrusted me to congratulate you! Bai Yu: Thank you, thank you all! Reporter: "Literary News" intends to set up a special page, asking the award-winning writers to provide a set of written talks, you see—— Bai Yu: I am ill and cannot write.Do you think we have changed the way, you ask me to answer?Talk about whatever you want, less mental stress. Reporter: Then, please talk about your impressions of this award-winning and award-winning activity?

Bai Yu: I was ill, and I learned the news of the award very suddenly.It is written out of my deep love for the people who created the new China, a human initiative.I am glad that this feeling of mine has been encouraged.This is not a reward for me personally, but a commemoration and comfort for the dead and the living who gave their lives and shed their blood for the creation of a new China. This is my main feeling for my award.I hope that there are more and better works describing this subject, and they will replace mine. Carrying out literary award activities is a method of cultivating writers, promoting literary and artistic creation, and prospering the cause of socialist literature.Most of the young and middle-aged writers have vigorous creative power, and they are an important creative force that determines the present and future of literature.Therefore, I think that more opportunities for awards and awards should be provided to them, and we should try to encourage them to write more good works.I sincerely hope that Chinese literature in the 21st century can create a peak and contribute to human civilization.

Reporter: Since its inception, critics have published articles.Now, could you please talk about the creation process and artistic pursuit of this novel? Bai Yu: It is my lifelong wish to write this novel; it can also be said to be the realization of my lifelong wish. The publication of the "Communist Manifesto" was a major turning point in the history of human development; under the light of the truth of communism, there were three great days: the Paris Commune Uprising, the October Revolution in Russia, and the birth of New China.Our October 1st, in particular, was a great mutation, a great feat, which changed the order of the world forever, opened floodgates and opened new paths for enslaved colonial peoples.On the eve of the first "October 1", I participated in the foundation stone laying ceremony of the Monument to the People's Heroes. At that time, I shed tears: The new China was built with the blood and lives of countless martyrs!Comrade He Qifang approached me at the first CPPCC and asked me to write for the first issue of "People's Literature".I wrote the novella "Ahead of the Fire" between meetings.I am not satisfied after writing it, because it is far from fully expressing the deep connotation of creating a new China.I once wanted to write two more novellas, and combine them with "Fire Before the Light" into one novel.After more than 30 years of thinking, especially during the seven-year imprisonment of the "Cultural Revolution", I realized that writing another novel can complete my mission of literary creation and art.

The subject matter is too big, so it is difficult to write well.How to express it artistically, instead of just writing the historical process of creating October 1st - this is a big problem for me to write.After Comrade Ding Ling learned that I was going to write a novel, she said to me twice: For a novel, it is better to write 200,000 to 300,000 characters.She inspired me a lot: Is it just a matter of word count when she said this?No, it's a matter of refining.Therefore, when conceiving, I decided to condense the history of the revolution from 1927 to 1949 in just a few months.Because, in my opinion, the task of literature is not to write about the process of war, but to write about people. It is to focus on describing the hearts, fates, joys and sorrows of the generations who created our October 1st.Of course, for such a design, it is not enough to adopt the writing method of "trench literature", but it needs to go up to the center and down to the front line to adapt to the depth of history and the breadth of themes!This is destined to write about the senior generals of our army.But this is exactly what I have wanted to do in art for many years, and the art field I want to explore.I have experienced many years of revolutionary wars, and I am familiar with many revolutionary generals; and the life experience of each of them is a living and tragic history!This is the inevitable artistic connection why I started to write after writing.

I used the Battle of Wuhan to start my writing, not only because I personally participated in this battle, but more importantly, every step closer to Wuhan aroused my inner excitement, because Wuhan was a major cause of the revolutionary martyrs during the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927. The abattoir, and the later created soviet area are also in its outskirts.Later, it was from here that the Red Army marched north, and now they finally came back victorious, how much emotion they would feel at this time!Write about their hearts and feelings at this time, what a rich and colorful artistic space will be displayed!Therefore, I established the commanders and combatants who liberated Wuhan as the main characters of the work, and used their life experience, their joys and sorrows to connect and reflect the revolutionary history of more than 20 years.

Premier Zhou, although he only appeared at the beginning and end of the work, he runs through the whole book like a red thread, and is related to the fate of several main characters. The character Bai Jie is not only the fate and emotional bond of the three protagonists Qin Zhen, Ding Zhenwu and Chen Wenhong in the work, her fate is also a kind of suspense I set for the work.I kept her sacrifice until after "October 1". When the joy reached its peak, it turned out to be a huge tragedy. This was not only for the aesthetic effect of "great joy and great sorrow".I feel that only in this way can we express the deep feelings of the dead and the living who created the new China. ——In fact, only in this way can it be in line with the essence of history. How many tragic soul tremblings are contained in the glorious day of creating a new China!In order to express the truth of the human heart, through Qin Zhen's wife Ding Zhenwu, I vented the greatest sorrow and pain, because only maternal love can complete this artistic mission.Please think about it, is it just Ding Zhenwu? ... No, thousands of families, thousands of families!But when Ding Zhenwu was on the verge of despair, Yuanyuan, a little girl rescued from the flames of war, appeared in front of her at once. Ding Zhenwu hugged her: he lost his own daughter, but embraced a new world that represents the future The "elf".

In order to include such a heavy historical vicissitudes in the 300,000-word space, I must try new artistic structures and new artistic creations.Of course, I may not have achieved the effect I expected; at the same time, due to the short length and compact structure, there are some places where the pen and ink are not stretched enough.Therefore, if there is any merit, I only hope that this small attempt of my own can provide a lesson for colleagues to write more brilliant works. Reporter: It is a revolutionary historical novel.The creation of novels on this subject had achieved brilliant achievements in the 1950s and 1960s; but since the new era, it has always been unsatisfactory.Could you talk a little bit about that?

Bai Yu: I also heard criticisms like "Five Old Peaks".I do not agree with such a generalization of the achievements of revolutionary historical novel creation in the 1950s and 1960s, and their influence on current literary creation.Of course, in terms of military literature creation, there are indeed problems that must be broken through and must be innovated.For example, in terms of art, it stays in writing about events and processes, but does not go deep into history, times, especially people's souls.In my opinion, there is still a problem of conceptual comparison in military literature, and it is necessary to break through conceptualization.Literature is human studies. This sentence is not only a generalization of art philosophy, but also a guideline for creative practice.If literature appeals to emotion and cannot move people, it is not literature.Therefore, revolutionary historical themes and military war literature should also focus on portraying people, describing their souls, their fates, and their joys and sorrows.I think it is always worth learning from.If Tolstoy only wrote about the confrontation between the two armies of Kutuzov and Napoleon, but did not run through the fate of the three Andrei families, then he would not be able to write about the great Russian national spirit and the spirit of the times, and he would not be able to achieve it. for art.Some people may say, isn't it the process of writing a three-party confrontation?This is also our literary tradition!I don’t think so, and I don’t believe it. If you compare Chen Shou’s "Three Kingdoms" and take Cao Cao, a typical character, as an example, you will know how bold artistic creation, imagination and fiction are!Everything is written as it is, which is imitation rather than art.

We must see our advantages: to create a new China, we have fought for 20 to 30 years, which is unique in the world, and this is a rich mine of literary creation.Most of the comrades engaged in the creation of military literature and revolutionary history have long-term military experience.If you have a solid foundation in life, you can naturally write good works.I know that when I write about soldiers, I don't just write about them standing in front of the map and pointing, that's all.In fact, they are the most beautiful souls, and they have joys and sorrows, love and hatred in their hearts; on the "big stage" of war, only by relying on the fate of these people can a "good show" be written!In short, revolutionary history is a very rich treasure trove that influences and shapes our future generations. It is not that too much is written now, but too little is written. It should be written more brilliantly and more gloriously!

The future of literature will mainly be pioneered by young and middle-aged writers.They will also be able to write more excellent works.In this, I am very confident.I believe that if China can win the revolutionary war under the guidance of Mao Zedong's military thought, it will certainly be able to win the victory of socialist literary and artistic creation under the guidance of Mao Zedong's literary thought. Reporter: Finally, can you talk about your current creative situation? Bai Yu: Because of years of deliberation, the first draft was completed in just over 80 days.Now that I am old and my physical condition is not as good as before, I may not be allowed to write another novel with a huge idea.Since 1988, I have been writing a prose series "The Journey of the Soul", describing my life in the form of prose.So far, I have written more than one hundred and ten articles.However, I have only written about the period of the War of Liberation, and I still have a lot of experience behind, and I am afraid I will have to write hundreds of articles.Calculated, the total length is more than doubled.Now I am sick and can't move my pen, so I can only continue to complete this prose series after I recover.This award is a kind of inspiration and encouragement to me who is sick and to my creation.

("Literary News" 1991.4.6.)