Editor's Note
"Literature Guanlan" is a special issue opened by China Writers Network in "Literature and Art Daily", of which the special edition of "Mao Dun Literature Award Winning Writers Research" aims to summarize the award-winning works and the experience of contemporary novel creation, we invite writers, critics or review and revisit the representative works of the winners, or take the pulse of the overall style of their creation, or analyze their literary creations in recent years, and strive to form a new look of research for the winners of the Mao Dun Literature Award.
Writer Introduction
Su Tong, born in 1963, is a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. He began publishing in 1983, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Beijing Normal University in 1984, and joined the China Writers Association in 1990. He is currently a member of the Presidium of the National Committee of the China Writers Association. He is the author of the novella collection "Flock of Wives and Concubines", "Red Pink", the novel "Rice", "My Imperial Career", "Riverbank" and so on. The novel "Yellow Bird" won the 9th Mao Dun Literature Award.
The novel "The Yellow Bird" won the 9th Mao Dun Literature Award
"The Yellow Sparrow" as an aesthetic construction of character tragedy
Zhang Guangguang
Su Tong and the three forms of tragic aesthetics
Whether in the history of Su Tong's creation or in the overall pattern of contemporary literature, "The Yellow Bird" is a phenomenonal existence and an aesthetic specimen worthy of continuous excavation. It incorporates multiple elements of thought, challenging the aesthetic habits of the reading and research community with its strong personality imprint and metaphor. Judging from the reaction of the critics in recent years, there has been sufficient attention and discussion on the narrative art, image aesthetics, growth narrative, female tragedy, redemption theme and other research perspectives of this novel, and there are more than 200 related papers. On the one hand, this shows that it strongly stimulates the explanatory impulse of the commentators, on the other hand, the multi-directional nature of these discussions seems to indicate that there are still doubts about its aesthetic evaluation and value positioning.
What is particularly worth exploring is its unique tragic aesthetic implications. Su Tong's novel creation in the past 40 years has covered a wide range of fields, and there are many masterpieces in terms of female themes, historical themes, growth themes, and realistic themes. Although the themes are diverse and the stories are different, there is a basic feature that deserves our attention, that is, most of the chapters are based on the tragic aesthetic colors of different degrees brought about by the writer's in-depth experience of the "human dilemma".
When we take the aesthetics of tragedy as a critical perspective, nature cannot just be an ancient theory of tragedy that speaks in general terms of concrete texts. As far as Su Tong's novel creation is concerned, there are three basic forms of tragedy in general, namely social tragedy, fate tragedy and character tragedy. Social tragedy emphasizes the tragedy caused by the conflict between people and society, the times and even between people, such as Su Tong's "Escape in 1934" and "Riverbank", etc., there are such a main line of conflict. As a basic form, social tragedy can also be expressed as historical tragedy, heroic tragedy, and so on.
Su Tong's tragic form of fate is somewhat similar to the tragedy caused by what Schopenhauer called "blind fate". But, as most contemporary Chinese writers have demonstrated, the tragedy of Su Tong's fate does not deliberately amplify the mysterious power that caused the tragedy. On the other hand, what sets it apart is that the Su Tong Society highlights the powerful cultural forces that are the root causes of the tragedy. For example, the story narrative of "A Flock of Wives and Concubines" deliberately dilutes the historical and social background, and no matter how Song Lian behaves, it is difficult to escape the shackles of tragic fate, so it is also a female tragedy and a cultural tragedy.
In the face of tragic fate, the passivity of the Lotus is the first, and subjectivity and initiative are difficult to play a role in changing fate. Whether or not there is a rebellious personality can not affect the direction of the tragedy, and it can even be said that the stronger the character of the group of wives and concubines, the more competitive and competitive, and whose fate is often more tragic. In "Yellow Sparrow", it is completely different, whether it is Baorun, Liu Sheng, or fairy, they all have many opportunities for self-choice, and they all have the opportunity and possibility to change their lives in a good direction. In other words, they are not passively moving toward tragedy, but because of character defects or under active choice, they are trapped in the tragedy of life. As a result, "The Yellow Sparrow" establishes an aesthetic form with character tragedy as the core.
Character tragedy and character conflict
Since the 20th century, the development of Chinese literature has been dominated by realism on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has been inherently far away from the religious and cultural system, so that the literary creation since modern China has shown two fundamental aspects in tragic aesthetics. The first is that "social-historical" tragedies are the main forms; second, even if some creations with the tragic nature of fate or the tragic color of personality are produced, they are mostly entangled with the former, or the three tragic forms are intertwined. The types of tragedies analyzed by Aristotle to Hegel to Schopenhauer are difficult to find in China a typical text that corresponds one by one. Although it is difficult for Su Tong's novel creation to completely detach from such a cultural tradition and aesthetic psychology, relatively speaking, his tragic creation shows a conscious stripping consciousness and reconstruction in the entanglement of three types.
The construction of tragic aesthetics is inseparable from the design of tragic conflicts. For "Yellow Sparrow", although the story span of the novel from the 1980s to the turn of the century, toon tree street through the spring at the beginning of reform and opening up to the panic of consumer culture, the main conflict of tragedy is not necessarily manifested as the conflict between ideals and reality, or the contradiction between individual struggle and social repression. The trajectory of the protagonist's fate does not necessarily depend on the changes of the times. When we say that Su Tong's novels reflect the relationship between the big times and the small characters very profoundly, they should be mainly limited to the social tragedy texts in his creation, and at the same time, it is easy to ignore the relativity of the "big" of the times and the "small" of the characters, and even cover up the hidden subject world and rich character connotations of the small characters.
In "The Yellow Sparrow", the essence of tragic conflict is mainly reflected in the conflict of personality, and the direction of tragedy is closely related to complex personality conflicts. Personality conflicts between characters form the main thread of the novel's tragic structure. There have always been irreconcilable personality conflicts and life conflicts between grandfathers and mothers. There are entangled personality conflicts between the three young protagonists. Unlike many marriage and love theme creations, the enmity between Baorun and the fairy has little to do with common contradictions such as the antagonism between rich and poor and the difference in status. The first time Baorun saw the fairy in the hospital, he was strongly attracted by the "strange poetry" of her body, and he liked her for no reason and tried to get close to her, but the good-looking, arrogant fairy did not hide her dislike for Baorun. A series of contradictions between teenagers have triggered the aggressiveness and desire to conquer Baorun, who is sensitive and stubborn. During the quarrel at the water tower, in a hurry, he tied the fairy to the iron ladder with the binding skills he had trained by taking care of his grandfather and ran out. As a result, rape cases occurred, and it also led to Baorun's ten-year unjust imprisonment.
This personality conflict between the two continued until Baorun met again after he was released from prison. When Baorun found the fairy who transformed into Miss Bai and asked for a "clear account", there was a quarrel again, Miss Bai was not afraid to stimulate the former's self-esteem with evil words, she used "honest eyes", with honesty and honesty, bluntly said, "I tell you the truth, you were ugly before, even uglier than now, ugly and slammed the door, Liu Sheng was handsome before, spending money generously, dancing and dancing well, handsome guys, girls like it in their hearts." ”
At the end of the novel, Baorun suddenly abandons the promise of having "cleared the account" and forgives the other party, and stabs LiuSheng to death at Liusheng's wedding, which seems to be a sudden behavior, on the one hand, it shows that Baorun's personality has a violent tendency to be suppressed to the unconscious level, but on the other hand, the more direct root is because even after living in Baorun's home because of the fall, this dusty woman who has been circling among men for many years has not changed her self-righteous, arrogant heart, failed to take into account Baorun's feelings, and blurted out in a sentence." Your father's pants let Liu Sheng wear away" made Mu Ne and the depressed BaoRun feel deeply humiliated, triggering his overreaction mechanism.
Different from the social tragedy caused by the powerful external force, and also different from the tragedy of fate that is ruthlessly dominated in the confusion, character tragedy often occurs in inadvertent personality conflicts, with the unintended domino effect of the of a thousand miles collapsing in the ant nest, triggering a thought-provoking tragic ending.
The inherent conflict of character and its aesthetic implications
In "The Yellow Sparrow", the personality conflict between people is still only the external conflict level of the tragic conflict, which constitutes the surface structure of the tragic aesthetics; and the internal conflict of the self that occurs within the individual has a more profound aesthetic value, which reflects the complexity, contradiction and even division of people's internal psychological world during the period of rapid cultural transformation from reform and opening up to the turn of the century. Sharp and complex issues such as moral change, human nature variation, and dynamic human culture are all hidden in the deep structure of tragic aesthetics.
From the perspective of character shaping, we will find that the three tragic protagonists in the novel are not the typical characters with a certain class of thought or identity consciousness corresponding to the typical era environment. But his personality is by no means a conceptual flat character, or a microphone to express a certain idea of the writer, but a living, plump, and more importantly, always in a dynamic and contradictory internal tension. It is difficult to frame them with some fixed moral concept or value judgment.
Baorun's personality has both blind impulsiveness and loneliness and stubbornness, but at the same time, it also has a side of ignorance and simplicity and longing to be loved. He engraved an eye-catching tattoo on his arm such as "gentleman" and "revenge", and the innocent disaster precipitated his hatred for a few points, and also made him grow a few points. And the so-called revenge is nothing more than a request to return to the water tower and dance a small song with the fairy, and then it is "cleared". Baorun's obsession with ignorance of emotions and the rational will that grew up in his personality almost made people see the possibility of reconciliation with life. Inferiority and self-esteem, revenge and reconciliation, obsession and letting go, madness and reason constitute an extremely acute series of internal conflicts in Baorun's personality, and as a dynamic contradiction tension drives the direction of tragedy.
It is common for some commentators to comment on "The Yellow Sparrow", saying that it is a grotesque way, telling the story of how a wronged teenager "under the wrapping of fate, step by step to the abyss of killing." Such an evaluation inevitably exaggerates the role of society and fate, and underestimates the protagonist's personality conflict and its role. Character determines fate, and in the tragic aesthetic world constructed by Su Tong's novel, it is not only to show how the rolling wheels of the big times crush the fate of small people, but also to logically show that small people also have a huge rich and complex spiritual world.
Liu Sheng, a rapist who escaped punishment by chance, has a complex internal contradiction between good and evil entangled in his personality. On the one hand, he is slippery and speculative, and full of ruffianity; on the other hand, he is flexible and generous, courageous and repentant, and has a pure heart. Just as on the terrace of Mr. Pang's villa, when Miss Bai asked Liu Sheng if he had prayed, Liu Sheng replied: "God and Bodhisattva, I don't care." I will bow to the god of wealth, the god of wealth is the boss, you do not believe to go to the temple to see, who has the most incense there? Whoever is incense is the boss! "It's a very real way to tell his mercenary side. But that's not all of his character.
Liu Sheng has been doing things with his tail between his legs for many years, and has taken care of his grandfather instead of Baorun for a long time, which cannot but be said to be a willing act of kindness. The pure love and good thoughts in Liu Sheng's heart still existed in the fairy of that year. Whenever he thought of the fairy of that year, he felt in his bones that no other woman could match her. Liu Shengshan is good at business, has generous hands, and has had many women; but in his heart, "no one is as clean as a fairy, no one is as stimulated as a fairy, and no one is as good as a fairy." Even in the face of the arrogance of Miss Bai, who had returned from despair, Liu Sheng was willing to saddle up before and after the horse and went to the soup to fight the fire. The complex conflicts within Liu Sheng's personality are obviously not explained by simple guilt or debt repayment psychology.
As a combination of victim and perpetrator, the pity and hatred of the fairy are so prominent. She hides the feeling of loneliness and emptiness with an arrogant and free posture, tries to change the status of the weak through the feverish pursuit of material desires, and slides into the abyss of depravity without giving up the fantasy of love.
After transforming into Miss Bai, with her confident posture and wisdom, she almost presented herself as a powerful "female mantis" who was dominant in the male-female relationship, and regarded men as her prey and as a controllable "cicada" within her field of vision. However, it was only a romantic night in Europe that she was obsessed with and failed to use contraception. The weakness of her character reinforces the tragedy of her life. "In order to repay the kindness of a night, it may cost you a lifetime." The problem is that she forgot, is this "kindness" worth repaying? "She found that her weakness was like a mushroom after the rain, and any rain fell in any corner, and the tip of the bamboo shoot would suddenly drill out of the ground, and if it wanted to grow into a bamboo tree, unfortunately, the spring shoots of the weakness were eventually cut and eaten."
From an existentialist point of view, existence precedes essence, and one's choices can redefine the nature of the self. But for Miss Bai, we are surprised to find that no matter how she chooses, it cannot change her tragic nature, nor can it change the direction of slipping farther and farther down the road of depravity. After conceiving the child of Mr. Pang, a Taiwanese businessman, she first chose to get a fetus, and Mr. Pang is not the kind of young handsome man she can't do without. Before the operation, she suddenly changed her mind again, decided to leave the child and go to Mr. Pang, she felt that Mr. Pang seemed to be the light in her darkness. Unfortunately, she is too conceited and too narcissistic, and after a trial and disappointment, the two turned against each other.
The internal paradox of character and the split of personality make the fairy's self an enemy of the self, and she cannot see the truth for herself or for others. "Miss White's Summer" begins with the following sentence: "There seems to be an unfair agreement between her and our city, and the agreement is written by fate, and our city does not belong to her, but she belongs to this city by nature." She's back. A fish swims around, and finally can't escape a loose fishing net. This fishing net is indeed the tragedy of life that cannot be escaped, but Miss Bai only soberly foresees half of the truth, and the other half she may never understand. That is, this fishing net is not completely woven by the outer hand, and she herself is a cocoon weaver.
If the yellow finch is everywhere, then every individual should know that when you go hunting cicadas as a praying mantis, you are also creating a yellow finch by yourself. "The Yellow Sparrow" completes the aesthetic construction of character tragedy in the form of metaphor.
Source: China Writers Network and Literature and Art Daily jointly organized the 5th edition of the special issue "Literature Guanlan" on February 21, 2022
Editor: Liu Ya
Second instance: Wang Yang
Third instance: Chen Tao