Nobel Prize nominee for literature, self-proclaimed redneck
In the 100-year history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mo Yan is the first Chinese to win this award. However, many people may not know that more than 30 years ago, Shen Congwen almost had a chance to win this honor.
Shen Congwen, the Chinese writer, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the second year in a row in the 1988 selection and made it to the final list. Ma Yueran, who was a judge of the Nobel Prize at the time, said many years later that Shen Congwen won the support of most of the academicians in the Swedish academy in the 1988 selection.
He firmly believes that if Shen Congwen had not died in 1988, he would have received the award in October. Shen Congwen's literary achievements and influence cannot be ignored, and his early death is our regret.
However, his work will continue to inspire and inspire us, and we will deeply respect him.
Shen Congwen deserves to win this award. He is the most productive writer in modern China, a representative of the Beijing School of literature, and is known as the "father of vernacular literature". In the list of the greatest writers of modern times selected by the Chinese people, it ranks second, second only to Lu Xun.
His ability to achieve such brilliant achievements, from the perspective of his life, is closely linked to his truth-seeking and pragmatic true character.
Shen Congwen firmly adheres to his own style and pursues creative uniqueness. He believed that the building should be like a small Greek temple, delicate, sturdy, well-proportioned, small but not delicate. His friend Shi Jun had suggested that he write about popular subjects such as "sexual history", poverty and revolution, but Shen Congwen insisted on himself and said that he could not accept these suggestions.
He is a man of temperament, sticking to his own style and not following the crowd.
Shen Congwen's creation always adheres to truthfulness and never caters to the trend of the literary world to earn manuscript fees. His works are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, profound but not vulgar, depicting the love between men and women, affectionate but not absurd.
He has no room for sand in his eyes, is meticulous about his own works, and also adheres to the attitude of seeking truth and pragmatism towards the works of others. He had the courage to criticize Xu Zhimo's poems, even though Xu Zhimo had been kind to him.
Shen Congwen thinks that Xu Zhimo's poems are too gorgeous, lack vitality, and are too cumbersome, and many sentences are meaningless. Although this may offend others, Shen Congwen always insists on being true and is not swayed by personal emotions.
Shen Congwen has also publicly criticized the famous writer Ba Jin. In the 30s, Ba Jin wrote a ** "Sinking", which made Shen Congwen very angry. He published an open letter in the journal, directly naming Barkin, accusing him of being too obsessed with reading the history of the French Revolution and being too easily influenced by the things around him.
Shen Congwen said that these things only increased Ba Jin's superstition and suffering, suggesting that he should be more mediocre. Although Shen Congwen's criticism method seems a bit poisonous and aggressive, his criticism is actually out of true temperament.
After all, he is a warm and kind person when it comes to students.
On the way back from the speech, Shen Congwen found a drunken person on the side of the road, and when he looked closely, it was his student Wang Zengqi. He immediately called a few classmates and took Wang Zengqi back to his residence to relieve him.
A few days later, Wang Zengqi came to Shen Congwen, and Shen Congwen found that one side of his face was swollen like a steamed bun, obviously with periodontal disease. He immediately went out and returned soon after with a bunch of oranges.
Years later, Wang Zengqi still remembers this incident and feels warm. For Shen Congwen, he is used to such things.
Shen Congwen is a person who is good at helping others. At one point, several students approached him for help, but he was strapped for money. At this time, his fourth sister-in-law, Zhang Yunhe, passed by, and he stopped her and asked for money.
Although Jang Yunhe and her friends thought these were trivial things, they still lent him all the money they had on them. Shen Congwen never uses money as a criterion to measure whether something should be done, but only to see if it is needed.
He once sold words for disaster relief and donated a few hundred yuan of his entire net worth to build a middle school in his hometown. Although he was not a wealthy man and even experienced poverty, he was always willing to help others.
However, he himself was a very frugal man. When he corrected students' assignments, he would help submit good articles to the newspaper, but in order to save postage, he would cut off the edges of the manuscript paper, leaving only the core with words.
Shen Congwen often wears a long gown, and even if it has been with him for a long time, he never gets tired of it. Yang Yi once recorded an interesting story, Xiao Qian, the editor-in-chief of Ta Kung Pao, returned to Kunming to compose a manuscript and communicated with Shen Congwen and others at a tea party.
At the meeting, Shen Congwen encouraged the group of young people while constantly driving away flies with his left arm. He was wearing a blue silk cotton robe, and the silk surface under the elbow of his right arm had been ground out of a hole due to the long hours of writing.
He kept waving his arms, and the cotton kept falling out of the hole, and he quickly shoved the cotton back into the hole with his left index finger. He kept talking, stuffing cotton without stopping, until the end of his speech.
The students sitting across from him struggled to contain their laughter, and by the time the meeting was over, they were laughing straight down the road. Although everyone didn't remember what Shen Congwen said, the blue sleeves with holes and cotton constantly falling were deeply imprinted in the memories of the students and lingered.
Shen Congwen treats others very generously, but he is extremely frugal with himself. As a result, Barking praised him for having a "heart of gold."
Shen Congwen is known for his philanthropy and sentimentality, and his tears are filled with deep concern for the country, the individual and nostalgia. In September 1938, Japanese fighters began to bomb Kunming, and Shen Congwen lived in the same dormitory with Fu Lei and his wife, and they had to run the alarm every day, which made Shen Congwen feel that he was "wasting his life".
One night, when they were eating at the dinner table, Shen Congwen suddenly burst into tears, he cried and said: "The country has become like this, everyone only cares about running for their lives, they can't study, they can't work. ”
His tears were filled with deep feelings of concern for the country and the people.
During the year that Shen Congwen was transforming and studying at North China People's Revolutionary University, he experienced the hardships and changes of life. Among them, cleaning the thatched house and helping in the cooking class are the two things he finds most meaningful.
During this time, he even wrote ** "Old Comrade" based on the master of the cooking class. After writing the third draft, Shen Congwen felt very relieved, because he found that his mind and the pen in his hand were still useful.
Years later, when someone asked him about his experience cleaning the thatched hut in Geda, Shen Congwen proudly said that his greatest contribution during this time was to clean the women's toilet and make it very clean.
Although he was wronged, he received understanding and relief from a strange female reporter many years later. Shen Congwen is famous for his love of crying, not only when he was young, but also when he was seventy or eighty years old.
When he was 80 years old, he returned to his hometown in his "Border City" and his hometown in his heart - Xiangxi Phoenix. In the past few decades, he has been thinking about every grass and tree in his hometown all the time, and the stone bridge and theater of the phoenix have appeared in his dreams countless times.
Now, he is finally walking on the stone and brick of the phoenix again.
Accompanied by his nephew Huang Yongyu and others, Shen Congwen walked through the ancient streets and alleys, and finally stopped in front of a dilapidated house, and he said affectionately: "This is the place where I was born, and it is my eternal home." ”
He also went out of his way to listen to a Wutang drama to relive the voices that had accompanied him throughout his childhood. When he sang "August 15th Osmanthus Fragrance" on stage, Shen Congwen couldn't help but sing along, he sang softly, tears rained down, and even sang for a full 3 hours.
Until the artists left, his eyes through the lenses were still red and tears flowed from his eyes. In his tearful eyes was his sensual true temperament.
Shen Congwen once said in "Border City": "People with true temperament in the world often have unique thoughts. This statement seems to be regarded as a portrayal of oneself. He always upholds the truth to face the world and is not confined to the mainstream**.
In 1933, Shen Congwen and Zhang Zhaohe tied the knot.
In the fourth year after Shen Congwen's marriage, he met the young female writer Gao Qingzi because he went to Xiong Xiling's house as a guest. When they met for the second time, Gao Qingzi's talent and appearance made Shen Congwen's heart beat.
Her outfit is exactly the same as the heroine in Shen Congwen's ** "Fourth". Gao Qingzi expressed his love for Shen Congwen in such an active and subtle way, and since then, the two have started dating.
This relationship is an extramarital affair, and an ordinary man must be sneaky and will never reveal any clues to his wife. However, Shen Congwen's true temperament made him make an extraordinary move.
He took the initiative to write a letter to his wife Zhang Zhaohe and confessed: I fell in love with another woman. Regarding the pain caused to his wife, Shen Congwen once defended himself in front of his friend Lin Huiyin: What is the conflict between my love and concern for someone, and my feelings for my wife?
That's what I thought and what I did, how could I not tell my wife? It can be said that Shen Congwen, who has a true temperament, gave Zhang Zhaohe a lot of sweetness when he was in love, and how much bitterness he created for Zhang Zhaohe after cheating.
This extramarital affair lasted for ten years, and it was not until Gao Qingzi got married that Shen Congwen completely broke off contact with her.
Shen Congwen died in Beijing on May 10, 1988, at the age of 86. His death did not cause a memorial service, a wreath, or even a news report.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature two years in a row, but his most desired way to say goodbye was not to be famous, but to leave quietly like a normal person.
Although Shen Congwen's life is bumpy, he has always maintained his true temperament, and his generosity, sentimentality, and frankness make people deeply admire him. At the end of his life, he chose to sprinkle half of his ashes into the Tuojiang River and half to bury them at the foot of Tingtao Mountain, facing his hometown day and night.
His last wish was to be a complete countryman, which was his last true disposition. Although he has left this world, his figure lives forever in our hearts.