【Introduction】
The winning title of the 2nd Mao Dun Literature Award (1982-1984) "Heavy Wings" is the first novel in China to reflect the construction of the four modernizations and industrial reform. The ** focuses on depicting the reform process and entanglement contradictions of the Ministry of Heavy Industry and its subordinate Shuguang Automobile Factory, and shows the complex and arduous struggle experienced by the party's work focus on shifting to the track of the construction of the four modernizations after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. **The urgency and arduousness of the reform and the sharp and complex social contradictions faced by it are deeply depicted, and the various human conditions and the world under the tide of reform have an all-round perspective, full of pen and ink, incisive discussions, and unique style.
Confrontation of ideas, entanglement of human nature; Entangled interests, power game.
Every great history of reform is full of scars of the lonely brave, and all depict the heroic posture of the reformers standing awe-inspiring in the wind and waves.
Reform is difficult. It is also difficult to write reforms. In the preface of "Heavy Wings", Zhang Guangnian sighed like this in the first sentence. The most vivid expression of "difficult reform" is that it is clear that it is dragging heavy wings, and it must also take off bravely and land safely.
If you fly low, your wings will rub against the sea, and they will become heavier and fall into the deep sea because they get wet; If you fly too high, your feathers will be too close to the sun and will be scattered by the sun, causing your wings to snap. Such a flight is painful, difficult, and dangerous. As a result, it is either an elegy or a glory.
Writer Zhang Jie is a wild goose that flies high in the literary sky, and she uses her writing and life to interpret what it means to truly "write like its people, and its literature like people".
Wang Meng was so amazed at Zhang Jie's charming words: "Sometimes it is so frank that it is almost stupid, so enthusiastic that it is almost **, melancholy is almost self-defeating, and it is so brave that it is almost trying to put an example on the bad habits." Isn't this kind of text a portrayal of Zhang Jie's entire life?
This female writer is full of jumps and changes, not only is her writing style constantly changing, but her life has never been defined.
Zhang Jie picked up writing in 1978, when she was 41 years old, and the reform and opening up also began to take off. In terms of literary age, Zhang Jie belonged to the prime of life as soon as she was born, and suddenly entered the adult world from a literary girl, and it seemed that she did not touch the scars and experience reflection, so she suddenly stood at the forefront of reform literature and wrote the classic "Heavy Wings".
As the only writer who has won the Mao Dun Literature Award twice, Zhang Jie, a literary darling, suddenly chose to break with narrative instinct, put down the blade of words, picked up the brush, and found a new way to dialogue with the world.
In the face of the trend, we have been pursuing self-innovation. Whether it is a work or a life, Zhang Jie has suffered from various controversies. And time speaks, always giving a fair judgment at the end.
The beauty of Zhang Jie's external image, the elegance of her spiritual temperament, the loneliness of her lifestyle, the frontier of cultural taste, and the sharpness of her public expression have become an eternally unique landscape in the literary world. Wang Anyi's mother, Ru Zhijuan, commented on Zhang Jie with the word "bare", which should be the most accurate and concise summary.
The real reformers in the world often have a pure heart.
The award-winning edition of Heavy Wings has been repeatedly revised. This in itself is a game of reform and conservatism. Writing out the details of the story can also become a wonderful and shocking reform**.
More than 40 years have passed, and the controversy and doubts in this book have long since faded. After comparing the first version with the award-winning version, many literary critics believe that the one-third of the change is also a burden that literature should not bear. The last appendix of the award-winning edition of the book is "Heavy Topics" written by Cai Kui after rereading the book, in which he also expressed regret for the revision: "The first version is sharp and sentimental, and the shock is strong, but the revised version has a feeling of smoothing out." ”
However, in the early days of reform and opening up, Zhang Jie's small step in literature also reflected a big step in reform. The accusations, criticisms and pressures that Zhang Jie suffered because of this ** show that reform always encounters various difficulties and challenges. Reform is a tortuous march that requires not only courage but also compromise.
Reform is always on the way, and there will always be new resistance. To promote reform, it is necessary to constantly carry out a contest of ideas and a constant contest of wisdom.
Prejudice is farther from the truth than ignorance", Zhang Jie expresses her hatred of prejudice in the book. As far as reform is concerned, the first thing to be eliminated is backward concepts and consciousness.
In this **, Zheng Ziyun, Chen Yongming and other staunch reformers are firmly wrapped in an "invisible net". Conservative consciousness, secular concepts, philistine philosophy, slackness mentality, etc., are everywhere and all the time, constantly consuming their fighting spirit and courage. As Zhang Jie lamented: "These old concepts are sometimes really like a net, tightly covering and tying up all people. To live a piece of life, to die a piece of death. If one of them dies and rots, no one will want to loosen their hands and feet to dispose of the rotting corpse, and no one will want to stick their nose out of the hood to breathe in the fresh air, and everyone will just stink and smoke. ”
To fight against those who resist or hesitate to reform, we need scientific thinking and innovative methods.
Heavy Wings is a story about the theme of industrial reform. At that time, the enterprise was losing money year after year, the cadres were lazy and selfish, and the workers were living a difficult ......These reform problems can be described as numerous. Chen Yongming was appointed as the factory director in the face of danger, he withstood the pressure, eradicated all kinds of formalism, and constantly created a more fair and just competition environment by improving the methods of rewards and assessments, so that workers have more confidence and dignity.
These reform practices echoed the later system reforms. For example, the later implementation of the "factory director responsibility system", as well as the implantation of more scientific and humanized systems and norms in enterprise management, etc.
In the early days of reform, contradictions and conflicts between old and new forces were everywhere. Tian Shoucheng, Kong Xiang, Song Ke, He Ting, and others played with power tricks, saw the wind to steer the rudder, dug pits and set traps, denied their hats and stigmatized, and used all ugly means to tie huge stones to the already heavy wings of reform, and also shrouded the fate of reformers with a strong tragic color.
In the grand narrative of industrial reform, Zhang Jie also uses marriage, love and family as a small incision to delicately show the emotional psychology of reformers.
Zheng Ziyun and Xia Zhuyun's so-called "model couple" are just superficial images, because of different concepts, the husband is realistic and innovative, and the wife is vain and hypocritical, they are pretending to be and acting with each other, and there is no true love in their hearts; And Chen Yongming and Yu Liwen, the couple, are full of love and respect for each other, and the kind of silent companionship and full support is moving.
Reformers are often lonely, and the process of "cicada metamorphosis" is even more painful. The preface of the first edition, "The dragon lost its water and was bullied by the snake", reflects the author's anger at the injustice of the fate of the reformers. The winning version was changed to "I would like to dedicate this book to those who work selflessly for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". This reflects confidence in reform and encouragement to reformers.
In this book, Zhang Jie also wrote: "For the ...... who have been abused, ravaged and destroyed in all kinds of adversityThus there is nothing more powerful and able to conquer the cruel and indifferent heart than 'warmth'. "Literature is also to warm up the cold heart and make the pessimistic more confident by conveying the power of warmth.
Zhang Jie is an idealist and a "rose with thorns". The sharpness and profundity of the past did not affect her later life to be gentle and calm. She once wrote about the famous scene before Chekhov's death in prose - one quiet midnight, in the fragrance of the acacia tree, the long-ailing Chekhov took the champagne handed by his wife Knibil and said, "I am going to die", and then, with a smile, left the last words of his life: "I haven't drunk champagne for a long time."
Before the storm of the Great Era, before taste and elegance were gone forever, Chekhov calmly left this world. Such a scene made Zhang Jie happy. Later, Zhang Jie talked about her last wish in life, that is, "looking forward to a perfect death." On January 21, 2022, 85-year-old Zhang Jie passed away quietly in a foreign country. It was a few days before the news reached China.
So splendid, so quiet. Looking back on Zhang Jie's brave, independent, uninhibited, and lonely life, I can't help but think of the sentence in Chekhov's love letter to Knibir when he was young: "A wild goose flew over." ”
Bidding farewell to Zhang Jie and looking up at the sky of reform, the brave and pathetic leading geese, the magnificence of piercing the sky, and the stinging sorrow have also become the most valuable echoes of the sky to the earth.
I believe that all heavy wings will eventually become incomparably lighter because of the spring breeze of reform.