Chapter 26 Reflections on Times and Literature——Zhi Weixi

Brother Weixi: During the Beijing Open Political Association, one day I had dinner at Wang Meng’s home. Wang Meng mentioned that he once gave a speech at a meeting, calling you “the father of the Great Wall Literature.” Some audience members asked: So what is Zhang Xianliang?He said he answered like this: Zhang Xianliang is "the uncle of the Great Wall Literature"!This is of course his characteristic humor.However, I think that if you can call the works of people with big capital letters who are described in the harsh reality and inside the bars of the big wall without losing their positive essence "big wall literature", it is indeed your "red". Magnolia pioneered the genre, so it's only fitting that I put my name after yours.Therefore, I should call you "brother" here.

Thank you for your appreciation and pertinent opinions, but I am right, just like you, and I am not going to talk about it. "The article is a matter of ages, and the gains and losses are well known."Those who understand our works will be regarded as confidants; those who do not understand or have a negative attitude towards our works for the time being, we must strive for understanding with the thoughts expressed with higher artistry.People who have come out of the Great Wall have long regarded the socialist democratic spirit as their important life criterion.We are especially grateful for knowing; we are more open-minded about dissent.Here, I just want to offer a few thoughts on such an important question you raised in your letter to me.

You said: "The current situation of our literature, compared with the profound and rapid economic reforms, seems a bit awkward, and even partially stagnated or stagnant. Why?... As a superstructure, literature and art have a surplus with economic reforms. Contrast with the contrary?" It is indeed worthy of our deep thinking. Brother Weixi, I don’t want to discuss the non-literary reasons for this literary phenomenon. I just want to say that if due to various non-literary reasons, the literary progress is “tweaked”, “partially stagnant or stagnant”, and “and The contrast between the surplus and the opposite of economic reform” will not only hinder the development of literature.This phenomenon will immediately feed back to fields other than literature, which is very detrimental to our economic and institutional reforms.Economic prosperity, literary stagnation, and socialism on such a dual track are unimaginable.Recently, I read some theoretical books on modern Western society and went to Northern Europe. I have a very strong feeling: if we do not attach great importance to the construction of socialist spiritual civilization and vigorously promote the development of socialist literature and art, prosperity, then we will not be able to give full play to the superiority of our socialist system, and in the economically prosperous society that has emerged after our "profound and rapid economic reform", various "social diseases" will appear just like the West.

Regarding the current "social diseases" popular in the West, such as drug abuse, alcoholism, superstition, and a surge in all kinds of crimes, etc., we explain that this is the inevitable evil result of the capitalist system and a manifestation of the spiritual emptiness of people living in it.Admittedly, such an explanation is reasonable for the social phenomena caused by the fundamental contradictions arising from private ownership.However, while we explain this way, we should also admit that in various sciences, literature and arts, the West continues to produce outstanding creative talents until today. On par.Therefore, what is the historical content of the so-called "spiritual emptiness" of modern people, and where is its connection with the social system?

After returning from Europe, I revisited Marx's thesis about modern society.Here, the space does not allow me to quote the original text of Marx's works in large sections. I just want to draw your attention to Volume 46 of "The Complete Works of Marx and Engels", Volume 1, pages 485-487 and 109. a few paragraphs.Those few passages will inspire us a lot.It turns out that the "spiritual emptiness" of modern people, that is, people living in industrial society, is a kind of emptiness caused by dissatisfaction.This "spiritual emptiness" is much higher than the "primitive abundance" of people in ancient agricultural societies.The productivity and wealth created by industrial society, on the one hand, will give rise to various "social diseases" due to its bourgeois form, and on the other hand, it will stimulate unprecedented creativity in people.And people start to be dissatisfied and start to pursue their own comprehensiveness, which is a common psychological state after the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

Now, the West is shouting that they have entered the "third wave", and we are building four modern socialist societies.In my opinion, what we call "four modernizations" summarizes the two historical contents of what they call "the second wave" and "the third wave".With the continuous development of the "four modernizations", we don't predict what changes will happen to people's moral concepts, values ​​and ethical concepts. It is completely predictable that people's spiritual pursuits will be placed in an important position in life. .Brother Weixi, you and I have lived a "low standard" life for 60 years.We all know that the social problems at that time were the simplest: eat, eat, eat!I don't even bother to wear it.At that time, people generally believed that as long as a society provided food and clothing for the people, everything would be fine and the world would be peaceful.As everyone knows, whether we start from the perspective of Marxist theory or social practice, we should now have this view: the more developed the social productive forces, the richer people's material life will be, and the more active people's spiritual pursuits will be. " will also become more "complicated".Especially in our society, which has "abandoned narrow bourgeois forms", what you call "profound and rapid economic reforms" have made us, as Marx pointed out, "instead of trying to stay at something that has become, But in the changeable absolute movement"; "Here, man does not reproduce himself in a certain determinateness, but produces his comprehensiveness".

Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, said: "In any stable society, the future development of any dominant wave of change is relatively easy to see. Writers, artists, Journalists, and other discoverers of the wave of the future, took on this mission.” I think he is wise in listing writers first among the “discoverers.”This discovery is expressed in your view of the state of literature as expressed in your letter to me.I understand what you mean, not that literature itself is "stagnant or stagnant".As you said in your letter, although "due to the perniciousness of 'Left' errors and the old habits of many years", although "using historical materialism as the guiding ideology to describe the literary works of 'yesterday', there are often bumps and bumps", However, it is undeniable that contemporary literature is still "entering the heyday of prosperity".Your worries are born of placing literature on the coordinate frame of reference of the times. Due to the rapid development of society, our people have begun to develop their comprehensiveness, and have begun to have a larger and broader spirit. The pursuit of reality, but not satisfied with the progress of literature.In this sense, your worries and dissatisfaction.It is after we walk out of the Great Wall that we need to develop our own comprehensive performance along with the development of society.Brother Weixi, your dissatisfaction is precious and noble.Because Marx said: ''The ancient world provided satisfaction from a limited point of view, but modern times do not.Wherever modernity appears in self-satisfaction, it is vulgar. "

During the happy days when I spent time with you in Beidaihe, I often heard you say the word "sense of mission".I really appreciate your clear sense of purpose.Yes, in a situation where our society has developed so rapidly, at a time when our people have begun to develop their comprehensiveness, and are about to become a modern man characterized by dissatisfaction and a psychology of greater and broader spiritual pursuits What should our literature do?A highly developed society should have literature and art with the same aesthetic power and ideological significance to adapt to it.If our writers cannot produce literary works with higher aesthetic value and deeper and richer ideological content in the future to meet the aesthetic education requirements of the developed people and enable them to enjoy spiritual enjoyment, then one of the socialist spiritual civilization Very important links will fall off and it will be difficult to maintain the entire social spirit.Think about how embarrassing this situation will be for us!

Again, I don't want to go into the non-literary causes of your anxiety.I just want to appeal to non-literary fields and the whole society to pay attention to our literature, to care about our literature, to encourage literature to express the comprehensiveness of human beings and to explore from content to form within the scope of the four basic principles. To promote the healthy development and sustainable prosperity of our learning and society at the same time.We writers can only work hard within our own professional scope.Brother Guowen once proposed that "literature should advance in step with the times." Some people disagreed, thinking that literature reflects reality and can never "synchronize" with the times, but can only follow the times.I also don't want to get involved in this kind of debate, because it can essentially be attributed to the endless discussion of the eternal law that links the development of productive forces with the development of art.However, we should at least admit that the proposition that writers should keep pace with the times can be established.But now, facing such an era of rapid development, we writers really have a great need to work hard.

First of all, I think that under the guidance of Marxism, we writers should adjust our knowledge structure and update our knowledge, which has become a top priority.To represent society, the times, and history, it is impossible without a more comprehensive and richer knowledge of society, times, and history.Today, some of our writers, including myself, may be able to talk about literature well, but they are unfamiliar with fields other than literature.This may be manageable, and some good work can be written, in a social environment of long-term stagnation, where people have not yet formed their own "rich relationships," and the narrow knowledge that an individual has , it shows the "primitive richness".Today, however, "profound and rapid economic reforms" have formed a broad and changeable social picture, and our yesterdays, traditional habits, etc. are also measured on a new historical balance; and wisdom) have been exposed to areas that have never been touched before; the transformation of information technology, new theories, concepts, artistic insights, technological progress, and new economic and social ideas are constantly emerging at an unprecedented speed, resulting in Man's new intelligent environment, so man expands himself; the centralization, standardization, synchronization, and specialization of industrial society will not eliminate human individuality in our socialist system society, on the contrary, our people are It is with the help of the material conditions brought about by the industrial society to fully develop their respective personalities.In short, literature is about people and society. The people and society in front of us have begun to develop tremendously. We are facing a diverse world. If writers do not develop accordingly, they do not adjust their knowledge structure and update their knowledge. , It is tantamount to disqualifying yourself from writing contemporary literary works.At the same time, the writer's courage comes not only from the artist's conscience and sense of responsibility, but also from the scientific understanding of society and the comprehensiveness of his own knowledge.

Secondly, I think it is not enough for us to just "deep into life" now, we must also "create life".We writers should not only be satisfied with penetrating into other people's lives, but also create lives with a clear sense of changing reality in the non-literary field in this era of profound changes.We often say that a writer should be a thinker, and the characteristic of a thinker is that he must grasp history creatively and experience history in reality.I very much agree with the opinion of the leader of the Italian Communist Party, the Marxist Kao Gramsci, that a true thinker must not be a practitioner, that is to say, he is a person who actively transforms the world around him.Even from the perspective of art, we know that rich imagination comes from the inspiration, life, experience and memory of art.But the life mentioned here is not other people's life, but one's own life; no matter how exciting and epic life belongs to others, it cannot replace the feeling of making even a small change in a certain field.If I use my usual joking tone, I suggest that you become the director of a labor reform farm, Guowen as the director of a railway branch, Wenfu as a catering company or a tourism company, and Jicai as an art company. The advertising company suggested that Zilong should really become "Director Qiao"...in order to display the writer's imagination of the future development picture and turn our enthusiasm for changing the reality into reality or localize it into reality.The transitional period of economic transformation is the period when entrepreneurship is at its strongest.I think that writers who put themselves into entrepreneurship will only help us express the times and reproduce history, and will not hinder our professional mission. As for me, I want to work with my district comrades to organize a unique publication in the country - "Literatur Information".Based on the understanding that our writers, amateur authors and the majority of literary lovers are facing a modern era of adjusting knowledge structure and updating knowledge under the guidance of Marxism, based on our current information production is advancing by leaps and bounds, so many people are caught by the ocean of knowledge. In the current situation of being submerged but not knowing where to find the necessary knowledge, this publication is designed for writers, amateur authors and general literature lovers to extract the necessary knowledge from the ocean of knowledge.That is to say, it is a journal devoted exclusively to literature, with extensive excerpts from literature, art, philosophy, aesthetics, political economy, sociology, psychology, folklore, history, geography, religion, ethnicity, and international politics. etc., as well as introductions to natural and applied sciences, such as new developments in space science, bioengineering, and marine engineering.It will become a set of highly professional materials; it does not pursue interest and news, but only pays attention to expanding the knowledge of literary workers and literature lovers, and it must be at the edge of social science, natural science, applied science and literature To promote and facilitate the creation, research, criticism, and reading of literature by forming a borderline science. Now, the leaders of our autonomous region are also interested in the plan to run this publication.But to turn this plan into reality, there must be many unexpected difficulties.But it is precisely because of the "unexpectedness" that the vitality can be stimulated, and life itself will continue to show its unknown aspects.We, if we are worthy of being contemporary Chinese writers, should do what we often shouted in Beidaihe: "Go to the sea! Go to the sea!" I would like to praise Fu An! Xianliang 1984.7.25.