Writer Wide Angle | Zhang Qinghua: The Problem of Drama and Lyricism: The Two Dimensions of Novel Narrative

One

Small citations

Fictional writing, or more narrowly, the art form of "novel" has existed in two distinct dimensions since modern times, namely "drama" and "lyricism". The novels of the classical era only focus on stories, so there are "legends", "adventures", "chronicles" and other novel types at home and abroad, which deliberately highlight the story; novels after the Middle Ages have strengthened the "allegory", such as various stories with the meaning of indoctrination or admonition, in the West there are "Ten Days Of Talk", "Canterbury Stories", the Arab world has "One Thousand and One Nights"; China has "three words and two beats" and a large number of note novels, the theme is nothing more than "warning", "awakening", "Yu shi" and "surprise", These probably belong to the classical novel form. The epistemological function of the modern novel has been greatly strengthened, especially after the nineteenth century, the concept of the novel as an art form for recording social life has been widely accepted, and the writer is no longer just a "storyteller", but an "intellectual" in the professional or humanistic sense, Dickens, Hugo, Balzac, Tolstoy, etc. are examples. This sense of identity of the subject greatly affects the novel genre itself, making it an intervener, prophecy (allegorical) agent, and promoter of social life. However, the story of the novel is still very strong, and it is only because of its specialization and high degree of skill that its dramatic qualities are increasingly highlighted.

Another scenario is the rise of modernism. Modernism itself had a great influence on the novel, causing its cognitive and entertaining functions in the ancient and modern sense to decline significantly, and its character as a personal "artistic adventure" was unprecedentedly reinforced. In this way, the ideographic and lyrical temperament of the novel has become more and more intense, and the novel has become an art that has almost nothing to do with the story and the public, and even deliberately opposes it. "Remembrance of the Lost Years" and "Ulysses" are typical extreme examples. The term "lyrical" here is broad, encompassing the conceptual expression and the outpouring of cultural elite consciousness.

In short, the prominence of the novel's two functions is the result of its modern development and changes.

In this way, it is also a judgment based on the actual situation of contemporary Chinese literature. Because in contemporary fiction, there are two types of writers with different styles, and their distinctions are quite obvious. Dramatic writing represented by writers such as Mo Yan, Yu Hua, and Liu Zhenyun, and lyrical writing represented by Wang Anyi, Chi Zijian, Zhang Wei, Zhang Chengzhi, and Bi Feiyu can be described as clearly distinguished. There are also some writers such as Jia Pingwa, Su Tong, Ge Fei, etc., which belong to the more ambiguous category, they are both dramatic and lyrical.

Of course, this is not absolute, but only to illustrate the point. In fact, as far as the above two types of writers are concerned, they are also compatible with each other, such as Mo Yan also has a strong lyricism, and almost all of his novels have a shadow narrator "I", or a true and false "Mo Yan", which will have an active speaker, discussion and lyricist role. Since the beginning of "Red Sorghum Family", he has such a prominent feature; while Wang Anyi is usually more talkative and lyrical, but sometimes it is also very dramatic, such as "Long Hate Song" has a strong drama, and it is easy to adapt it into a drama. The same is true of Bi Feiyu, who always seems to have an omnipotent "Bi Feiyu" talking in his narrative - every character is a "masked author", but most of his works also produce a strong dramatic force. And his drama does not rely on the story, but on the dramatization of the character's language and psychological situation. There is also Jia Pingwa, who is most of the time a prose writer, and the story structure in his works seems to be relatively free and scattered, but he also has highly dramatic novels such as "Waste Capital", which almost reach the level of "quasi-classical narrative".

The problem is obviously very complex, and our discussion must be cautious and based on the problem awareness in the writing, rather than jumping into a self-made doctrinal trap. Moreover, regarding the ancient and modern changes between the two, the differences between China and the West are also huge, and it is impossible to talk about them in specific contexts and specific issues. So when we talk about these writers, the main thing is not to deliberately demarcate what kind of writers they are, but to remind ourselves of how to highlight or balance the dramatic and lyrical factors in writing, what kind of novel is a good novel, and what kind of relationship they have with the problem of drama and lyricism.

Two

What is the drama and lyricism of the novel

Drama and poetry are the oldest genres. In ancient Greece, the earliest literary genres were tragedies and epics, which gave rise to more genres such as comedy, satirical poetry, speeches, fables, and historical narratives. This shows that among the basic concepts and experiences of "literature", drama and poetry, drama and poetry, are the elements closest to the core. The same was true in ancient China, where the earliest literary style was poetry, and the Book of Poetry became the earliest literary classic. There are also chapters similar to "epics" in the Book of Poetry, but they are too small to be valued. Chinese drama appeared a thousand or two thousand years later than it did in Greece, and it was not until the Yuan Dynasty that it was more mature. This cannot be done, it is determined by our small peasant social form, because there has always been a lack of Greek city-state culture, and the large-scale stage art of drama, especially the support of urban consumers. It was not until after the Middle Ages that China's urban society slowly developed, and rap literature ("speaking" appeared in the Song Dynasty, and its "performance" attribute can be considered to be the prototype of drama), and the development of dramatic art became possible.

But there is no doubt that the novel flourished after the theatrical boom. This was true in ancient Greece, and it was also true in China, why did the Ming Dynasty flourish with novels? A very important reason is the development of theatrical art in the Yuan Dynasty.

Why? Fiction is essentially an art of "gossip", in Bakhtin's words, a "world of gossip". Poetry is obviously not a miscellaneous (except for epics or poetic dramas) because it represents the author speaking, while novels are different from dramas, they are meant to imitate different characters in the real world, so essentially they are the same. The difference is only that drama must be "in a prescribed time and space"—European classical theatre has a strict "trinity" that, on a small stage, completes a highly concentrated dramatic conflict through the performance of the actors; the novel does not need these complex conditions to support it, it can only be realized slowly on paper.

Ancient Greek literary theory was well developed, and from Plato to Aristotle, there was a central key word called "imitation." Imitation is one of the most basic understandings of the ancient Greeks about art, which is the imitation of human behavior. Poetry, then, is the art of imitating the inner world of a single person, and drama is the art of imitating the society and reality of the public. Reality, on the other hand, contains scenes, character relationships, and the murmurs of sentient beings. So drama must be the voice of multiple people with different characters, and it needs to imitate interpersonal relationships, imitate a complex storyline, a centralized conflict.

This "multi-person voice and will" is named "polyphonic fiction" in Bakhtin's theory. Bakhtin argues that polyphonic novels are distinct from the "monologue novels", starting with Dostoevsky, "a multitude of independent and non-integrated voices and consciousnesses, composed of many voices (voice parts) of full value each composed of true polyphony — this is indeed a fundamental feature of Dostoevsky's novels." ”

Obviously, in the drama, each character has its own identity, character and will, and will not follow the logic of others, so if you say "polyphony", drama is 100% polyphonic art, as many characters as there are, there are as many voices and logic. The novel is different, the most powerful role is the narrator, the narrative discourse determines almost all the characters, so the earliest "story" can hardly be polyphonic, the author directly replaces all the characters thinking and speaking, very easily determines everything. In the novels after modern times, the complexity of describing society has become more and more of a demand, so the will and discursive personality of the characters need to be highlighted, and polyphony is inevitable.

So, in a sense, the novel is a "low-cost drama", and the drama that does not require performance conditions is also a drama simulated on paper.

Europeans have been debating the question of whether Shakespeare's plays should be performed or not, arguing that Shakespeare could be "read" only and not necessarily staged. When I read Shakespeare myself, I deeply agreed with this.

From Bakhtin's theory, we can at least summarize and extend the following points: First, in the narrative of the novel, the so-called polyphony is equivalent to drama, but the drama is greater than the concept of polyphony, and polyphony must be related to drama; second, polyphony also emphasizes "character logic of characters", good characters must have personality logic, and personality logic may not completely follow the author's narrative tone and will, but have independent properties; third, we usually say that the novel should be dramatic, that is, "the dramatic logic of the story". Drama logic is different from reality logic, and the problem with many people's writing is that they only know that there is realistic logic, but do not know that there is dramatic logic; fourth, this "drama" includes the coincidental elements of "no coincidence and no book", but more importantly, it is the "narrative logic" mixed with the above various logics, which seems to be given by the author, but is actually objectively "generated", not arbitrary.

This leads to another important concept, which is the "dramatic logic of the story." How many people have written a lifetime, may not be clear, the narrative of the novel is not arbitrary and casual, must follow a "logic of the story", this logic unfolds, that is, the "character logic" or "fate logic" of the characters, but also the "dramatic logic" of the story, the "narrative logic" of the narrator, and the "art logic" of the work.

This logic is, of course, "created" by the author, but it seems to be "naturally inherent", above or before the author's setting, and the author simply "found" it. It is very stubborn and will not completely obey the author's orders. So in this sense, a good work is not created by the author, but derived from its dramatic logical continuum.

There is a ready-made example, that is, Yu Hua's "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", in this work's "Self-Introduction", Yu Hua said that his role as a narrator is basically idle:

Here, the author sometimes does nothing. Because he found from the beginning that fictional characters also have their own voices, he thinks that these voices should be respected and let them go to the wind to find answers on their own. ...... When the book was finished, he found that he knew no more than anyone else.

The characters in the book often speak on their own, sometimes starting the author, and when those appropriate and wonderful words blurt out of the fictional mouth, the author will suddenly feel inferior and think, "I can't say such a thing." However, when he became a true reader, when he read the works of others, he often secretly felt proud: "I have said such things too." ”

It seems to be a reproduction of Bakhtin's statement, but they should coincide. Although Yu Hua said that "he does not know more than others", in fact he still "knows everything", but he completes the narrative by respecting and seriously exploring the character logic of the characters, rather than relying on his own subjective will.

There is also the example of "Alive", which has so far been distributed at home and abroad, which is said to have exceeded 10 million, setting a record for the distribution of a single work since the birth of new literature. It was so popular that many readers said they couldn't help but shed tears as they read the novel. But I want to ask: Can all the coincidence elements in this story stand up? Obviously not. If we look at it from the logic of the world, from the logic of daily life, even if the misfortunes of the whole world are gathered in one person, there will not be so much suffering and misfortune. However, when Yu Hua wrote about the character of Fugui, even he did not think that from the beginning of the novel, he unconsciously fell into a trap, a tragic narrative logic, this "gambler's story", this "person who gambled with fate", in his fate, there was such a trajectory, Yu Hua just followed this logic, resigned to the domination of a will in the underworld, until he lost all his relatives, leaving only an old cow that depended on each other.

Yu Hua | "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood"

South Seas Publishing Company | 1998

Why is that? I think there is a philosophical theme in it: everyone is a gambler, a gambler who gambles with fate, and everyone loses, and no one wins in the face of fate. This is also a matter of logic, because Heidegger said earlier, "Everyone is mortal", and this is fate itself. So everyone who gambles with fate is bound to lose everything. It's just that the process will vary a lot. It is precisely because of this premise that people will consciously or unconsciously realize that they may be another version of "Fugui", and they will also want to understand how badly they will lose. This is one of the intrinsic reasons why "Alive" is so popular.

I once discussed with Yu Hua himself whether he set the final ending of Fugui at the beginning when he wrote "Alive". He replied that he didn't, and at first he didn't seem to realize that Fugui would be so miserable, but just wrote and wrote, and involuntarily such a result appeared.

From this, I thought that Yu Hua was such a writer: he was a writer who followed the logic of narrative and the logic of the fate of the characters. His characters are "instinctive narrators," meaning that he himself rarely appears in his narrative, at least not as a person. Whether in "Alive", "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", or "Brothers", there is no "Yu Hua as a narrator", but a small person himself, who speaks and acts according to their own will, and their IQ is not high, most of them are only equivalent to children or mentally handicapped. There are no thinkers and intellectuals, only ordinary people. Therefore, Yu Hua's narrative discourse is also civilian, without complex and profound discursive elements, which can probably be regarded as a result or product of his "dramatic writing".

But if you change to some other writers, there will be "intellectual-type figures" talking, they will make judgments and express arguments, express feelings, and the language will also take on the style of the author, and there will be poetic and lyrical meanings. Take Wang Anyi, Zhang Wei, Zhang Chengzhi, Bi Feiyu and other writers as an example, the protagonists in their novels generally have high emotions, and the words spoken are close to the author's voice, when we read, we will feel that the characters speak as if they are "invisible authors" talking, or simply the authors are wearing the masks of the characters. We often feel that behind the narrative there is a compassionate wise man and lyricist, for example, in "September Fables", this role is hidden but always exists, in "Ancient Ships", he may become Sui Baopu, in "Hedgehog Song" he will become Liao Mai, they themselves also play the role of "alternative narrator role". In Bi Feiyu's pen, almost every character is a narrator, but the author suddenly "drills" into the heart of each character, and then begins to "speak for them", he knows everything, and turns everyone into the author's masked stand-in, because of the author's infiltration, his characters have a distinct "analytical", the character logic of the character is very clear, but there is a powerful narrator who covers everything.

This is what I understand as a lyrical novel.

Let's take a look at the dramatic writing again, still taking "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" as an example. In the novel, the narrative completely follows the way the little people speak and behave logically. Therefore, Xu Yulan will repeatedly talk about his relationship with He Xiaoyong and the people on the street. She turns the tragedy into a comedy—an irony of Lu Xun's Blessings. And Xu Sanguan will also inappropriately talk to the children about this topic at the "Family Criticism Meeting", and his justification for Xu Yulan is also very funny. The words and deeds of the characters are perfectly matched with their "almost mentally retarded" personalities.

There is a point in the novel that is very important and interesting. Xu Sanguan only sells blood twelve times, and it is reasonable that if a person sells blood twelve times in his life, it may not be too big a thing, but when handled in the narrative, it will feel enough, which will cause a feeling of "selling blood for a lifetime". Why, because the author generates a rhythm of life and death through a "rhythmic" process. The first three times, the reason for selling blood was very accidental, and the interval was very long, which was several years. This is similar to the experience of young people, exuberant life, ignorant experience, there will be no feeling of sadness or despair; and then, the seven or eight blood sales in the middle become very dense, making people feel the appearance of doom and calamity in life, feel the rapid disappearance of time and the crisis of almost dying, which is similar to the experience of mid-life crisis; the last blood sale is a virtualized and unrealized ritual, a long echo of life, the afterglow of suffering in life experience, and the respite before death.

There is a question, since Xu Sanguan's life was very difficult, why did he not arrange for him to die, and why did his blood-selling career not end with death like Gen Long, the guide of his blood-selling career? The answer is also simple, if so, there is a contradiction between the aesthetic style of the novel and the logic of the narrative. Because "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" is about the story of small people, and the story of small people is usually comedic, Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan are obvious characters with character defects, if they are arranged to die at the end, the narrative will become tragic, so that the taste of the work will all change, and the good stories in front of them will be abandoned.

This is also governed by narrative logic. Obviously, "Alive" is tragic, and "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" is quasi-comedy, although Fugui is also not dead, but his life is more difficult to die, more cruel than death. Therefore, in showing Fugui's weakness as a small person, the novel is limited to his youth, writing about many of his youthful unreliability, but after he became a poor man, there is no more joking description of him. "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" is different, until the last moment, the author still insisted on the comedy style.

Regarding Xu Sanguan's last blood selling experience, it is also worth discussing. This time, he did not sell blood out of the danger of life, but suddenly recalled the difficult years in the past, very emotional, wanted to taste that taste again, and was proud. But this time, people didn't want his blood at all, the hospital's "blood head" had already changed, and instead of buying it, they humiliated him. Xu Sanguan was very angry, and after he came out of the hospital, he suddenly began to cry.

Xu Sanguan has never cried in his life, not crying not because his fate is not tragic enough, but because his personality is enough "two", according to his personality logic, he belongs to people without heart and lungs, how can he suddenly cry, which seems to be inconsistent with the comedic atmosphere of the novel. But Yu Hua here comes with a colorful description. He wrote that Xu Sanguan cried through his own door and cried through the street—

Xu Sanguan began to cry, opened the clothes on his chest and walked over, letting the wind whistle on his face and blow on his chest; let the cloudy tears gush out of his eyes, flow along the cheeks on both sides, flow to the neck, flow to the chest, he raised his hand to wipe it, the tears flowed to his hands again, flowed on his palms, and also flowed on the back of his hands. His feet were moving forward, his tears were flowing down. His head was raised, his chest was erect, his legs were strong when he stepped out, and his arms were not hesitant to swing, but his face was full of sadness. His tears crisscrossed his face, like rain on the window panes, like cracks climbing up a bowl that was about to break, like branches growing vigorously, like canals flowing into fields, like streets filling towns, and tears weaved into a net on his face...

Obviously, in the whole "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood", this is the only lyrical pen and ink, even if Xu Sanguan sold blood in Linpu, Baili and other places one after another, almost died, the author also did his best to restrain his emotions and ink, and did not jump out to write sensational words. However, at this time, he was so indulgent in this lyrical passage that it was inevitable that people could not help but secretly worry about how Yu Hua would end up. Because this gorgeous pen and ink, almost like a derailed planet, has changed the narrative style of the entire work, the original comedic meaning, the humor of the little people, the logic of low IQ, how to continue to the end, really become a suspense.

Therefore, in the end, Xu Sanguan must be "broken nose for laughter", although it was not sold into blood, but still came to the Victory Hotel with Xu Yulan, asked for yellow wine and fried pork liver, and beautifully recalled and sighed. And after Xu Yulan's venting, a verbal denigration of the new "blood head", Xu Sanguan ended the entire novel with a vulgar slang:

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, "This is called dick hair that comes out later than the eyebrows, and grows longer than the eyebrows." ”

The whole passage is wrapped up in this sentence, which can be described as a set-tone ending that breaks into laughter and turns anger into joy, returning to the narrative logic of the novel, the personality logic of the characters, the dramatic logic of the story, and the aesthetic logic of the work. This should not be an exaggeration, and I also believe that Yu Hua said in the "preface to the Chinese edition" of the book, "This book is actually a very long folk song", which is by no means an exaggeration.

If we use an illustration to illustrate, this is the drama in the narrative of the novel, and of course it also contains lyricism. Although I insist that Yu Hua is a "purely dramatic writer", I also recognize the excellent lyrical passages and colorful chapters in his novels.

Three

Typical polyphonic novels: "Flower Cavity" and others

Li Er's "Flower Cavity" is a novel with very complex meanings, and if you want to give a simple summary, it is the story of "personal death", a story generated by the fundamental internal logic of Modern Chinese history since the New Culture Movement.

This logic is difficult to explain clearly, to borrow Li Zehou's words, that is, "the double variation of enlightenment and salvation" and "salvation overwhelms enlightenment"; to expand it, it is that the new culture initially advocated the personal value in the category of enlightenment, and marked the "liberation of individuality", and many people initially embraced this belief to join the revolution. But in the process it was discovered that individualism and individualism, far from being fellow revolutionaries, would gradually become objects of revolution. Obviously, many of the first revolutionaries, such as Chen Duxiu and Qu Qiubai, were later thrown out of the center of power, and even became the object of the revolution for a time, until they were rehabilitated recently. The reason for this is also partly the inconsistency between the logic of the new culture and the logic of revolutionary culture.

Whether the "death of the individual" is, in the final analysis, the question of whether it is the "rout of the new culture" remains to be answered by history. But the "failure of the new culture" is not an isolated phenomenon in the literary narrative, nor is Qian Zhongshu's "Siege of the City". Fang Hongwei's famous speech, "Since Haitong, western culture has only survived in China for a long time, one is opium and the other is syphilis", which is the same topic. Western good things such as "Mr. De" and "Mr. Sai" have not yet taken root, but opium syphilis has been left for a long time, which is also a cultural fate. This shows that some things in Western culture are still unsatisfactory in China, including the concept of "individual" value.

Qian Zhongshu | "Siege of the City"

People's Literature Publishing House| 2017

Another point is philosophical, that is, the protagonist of the novel as a spiritual phenomenology. In terms of personality, he is a "Hamlet-esque" character. As an "intellectual", "Ge Ren" contains a logical Achilles heel in his personality. What is Hamlet's weakness? It is easy to be incompatible with reality, and once it conflicts with reality, he will immediately become very lonely and helpless, will become an "outsider", become a logically confused person, and he will definitely fail. This kind of "spiritual inheritance" is indeed very poisonous, and the intellectual figures in Western literature after the Renaissance, or the spiritual allegories and suitors - from Goethe's young Werther, to the "superfluous" in Russian literature, to the "madmen" and "zero remnants" in modern Chinese literature, have such a characteristic in their bones, in the process of awakening or revolution, it is easy to suffer setbacks, be expelled from the center, and eventually become an "other".

Ge Fei's "Jiangnan Trilogy" tells such a story. "Peach Blossoms on the Face of Man", "Mountains and Rivers into Dreams", and "Spring in jiangnan" respectively narrate the serial stories of three revolutionaries of different generations, they are three generations in the sense of blood, but also a metaphor for a certain historical continuity, they all have the ideal spirit of hoping to transform society, promote progress and "human unity", but they also inherit the "peach blossom source personality" of their ancestors who are obsessed with fantasies, and they are all similar to Hamlet or Jia Baoyu-like characters, all of whom are incompatible with the mainstream politics of the times, so they have also encountered the tragedy of their lives. Through these three novels, Ge Fei deals with the modern history of China, especially the spiritual history of modern Chinese intellectuals. His tragic protagonists are all closely related to the revolution in modern China –starting from the revolution and losing from the revolution. And their failures, in the final analysis, are also related to the personal endowments and temperaments in their bones.

The same is true of Li Er's "Flower Cavity". He has to deal with this extremely difficult theme, which requires crossing many historical minefields and spiritual mysteries, so there is no way to complete a story of the collapse of "personal"values in modern China without using a "flower cavity" narrative. This is a pretext for the new culture of "May Fourth" and a philosophical discussion on complex human nature propositions.

The protagonist "Ge Ren", pronounced in Henan dialect and Shaanxi dialect, is close to "individual", and the story begins in northern Shaanxi. So another name for this novel can be called "The Death of the Individual." "Flower Cavity" deals with the encounter of personal value in the process of evolution from the new cultural logic to the revolutionary logic.

Regarding the storytelling of the story, "Flower Cavity" narrates the same thing through three narrators, but the background and attitude of the narration are completely different, and the sense of role is also very different, so the truth about the same history is even more confusing. This should be in line with the characteristics of the "new historicist narrative" that was popular in the novel industry from the 1990s to the turn of the century, that is, the sensitivity to the way history is told and the sense of uncertainty. Whose history, who is telling it, how is it being told? These questions affect people's understanding and judgment of history.

The first appearance is about the doctor Bai Shengtao, who is a revolutionary rebel. He reported to his superiors the process of searching for Ge Ren's traces, and Ge Ren had become a mystery. Is he dead? The narrator flashes his words to show that Ge Ren is dead, but who killed him, apparently no party is willing to admit it. Because our side thinks that he has defected to the enemy, and the Kuomintang believes that he was installed by our party, they all want to get rid of Ge Ren, but it is unknown who got rid of him, no one admits it, and in the end both sides believe that he was killed by the Japanese and died in the "Battle of Erligang". This was just right, which not only preserved Ge Ren's honor and made him a "national hero", but also exempted both sides from responsibility, because no one was willing to bear the charge of killing him.

The second person to tell Ge Ren's story is Zhao Yaoqing, who was an underground worker who infiltrated the military command, but his identity is also very suspicious, and there are different theories about whether he has betrayed. He told the story of a long-held past during the Cultural Revolution, as a prisoner on a labor camp, and in the process of being beaten by the Red Guards. But it is clear that there is a problem with his thinking, because he is not worried about whether the truth of history can be clearly explained, but that he is worried that his words will not meet the requirements of the revolutionary young generals. He spoke the Henan dialect, ran the train with his mouth full, and often responded to interrogations by shouting revolutionary slogans, which made people cry and laugh.

Bai Shengtao spoke northern Shaanxi dialect, and Zhao Yaoqing spoke Henan dialect. The accents, tones and effects of these two narrators have constituted "polyphonic entanglement and mutual denial", and the words of the two people have formed a mutually canceling relationship. And the third one has to continue to appear, and finally this narrative can become a real mess. The narrator, Fan Jihuai, was a lieutenant general in the Kuomintang, who later rebelled and surrendered, and is now a member of the CppcC National Committee of the Republic, in his old age. He is telling the story of Ge Ren, with whom he himself studied in Japan and played a direct role in the final death of Ge Ren, but his story is also subversive and constantly limited by political correctness. It was only because he had a lustful problem, inspired by the constant inducement of a beautiful girl named Bai Ling (Bai Shengtao's granddaughter), that he intermittently revealed some truth little by little.

He should be in Mandarin.

Li Er| "Flower Cavity"

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House | 2017

The identities of the three narrators almost bring together various political elements of different periods in modern Chinese history, and their identities alone have flattened modern Chinese history. The ambiguity of identity and position, the complexity of the historical situation, and the ambiguity and multiplicity of discourse methods make the same story tell a completely different effect, which is a typical and extreme "polyphonic" novel. It corresponds to the uncertainty of history itself.

Moreover, there is actually a "fourth" narrator, the author himself, who is responsible for providing certain so-called "historical archives", which are connected by symbols such as @ and & and distinguished by italics. True and false, and the previous statements constitute a corroboration or offset relationship.

To borrow a passage from the writer Wei Wei, perhaps more vividly, she said, this is "a history in disguise, but also a wild history of careful affairs, the chain of evidence is linked one link at a time, after examination, screening, to Wu Cunjing, the end is still a confused account, and this is the essence of history." Behind it is the history of the Republic of China, the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the history of relations between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the history of Sino-Soviet diplomacy, the history of humanities, the history of life, local customs, lace gossip, medicine - Li Er praised a 'fecal science'... I chose to believe that, at least in the novel, he quoted the scriptures, as if they were real. For a copy of "Flower Cavity", he put a hundred years of China in his pocket, and when necessary, he will feel a small card to show you. ”

In addition to this typical polyphonic narrative, there is also a novel that is close to "pure dialogue", that is, the story itself is not important, just like in Qian Zhongshu's "Siege of the City", there is almost no decent story, but this does not prevent it from being an outstanding novel, where is the outstanding? It's its conversation. Its dialogue is not only "the specific discourse of the character", but also embodied in the "dialogue relationship of the character", which has risen to a "cultural dialogue" situation. For example, Fang Hongwei and Zhao Xinlin, the role of the two of them is usually "the author's own role double", they often mock current events and various surrounding phenomena, forming a variety of sharp edges and witty remarks. Among the various intellectual characters fictionalized in "The Siege", Fang Hongwei and Zhao Xinlin are also ridiculed characters, but they both have a bottom line and often "reflect" the author's attitude. Fang Hong gradually bought a fake diploma, "Doctor of Clayden University", but he was secretive about it, while Han Xueyue dared to show off everywhere, and he was incorruptible and shameful. The most wonderful thing about "Siege of the City" is that through the dialogue unfolded in the "Living Room of Miss Su" and the office of Sam Lu University, the "carnival of intellectual discourse" of that era was formed, creating a comedic situation of "mixed discourse" like Cao Yuen Long's "Platter Companion", depicting the personalities and faces of various characters in the intellectual world, and metaphorically "the collapse of the new culture".

A contemporary paradigm of conversational writing is Wang Shuo. Wang Shuo's novel has almost no story, only dialogue, setting up a key dialogue situation, setting up a character relationship with a sense of dislocation, and then unfolding a hilarious dialogue. In fact, Wang Shuo also tried to write stories, but at that time he was only a third-rate writer, and the early "Air Hostess" wrote an air disaster, and "Half Flame, Half Seawater" began to write "bad guy stories", but at that time his talent was not really revealed. It was not until he wrote "Stubborn Lord" and "There is no seriousness at all" that Wang Shuo transformed into a first-class writer.

Wang Shuo's excellence lies in his high sensitivity to contemporary cultural structures. In the mid-1980s, when intellectual discourse was considered a myth, he dared to subvert it by "the little leper parody of Nietzsche or Freud"; before the old ideological discourse disintegrated, he also used the "misuse of cadre tone in the tone of the little bastard" to dwarf and dissolve the authoritative power of the old discourse. Later, he felt that he was not addicted, so in many novels he simply made a game scene of three discourses, and the three of them, small citizen discourse, knowledge discourse, and "cadre cavity" carried out a game of cat and mouse. This kind of discourse game seems to be slippery, but it implies a very key cultural logic, which plays an indispensable role in alleviating the inherent discursive tensions in contemporary China. It's just that Wang Shuo's style is too comedic, and not too many people pay attention to it.

Four

Lyrical, "imagery" and more

Finally, let's talk about lyrical fiction.

Novels about lyricism may contain two situations: one is a novel with a particularly strong individuality and a particularly prominent emotional will, which may be a lyrical work; and the other is a "non-polyphonic novel", that is, a novel that only uses the "author's voice" to tell.

The writers of the former category, such as Zhang Chengzhi and Zhang Wei, are more obvious, with strong lyricism and strong poetic color. Reading Zhang Wei's "Fables of September", you will feel that there is a powerful narrator in it, and this narrator injects his own views, positions, minds, and temperament into the words and lines in the process of narration; Zhang Chengzhi's "Black Horse", "The River in the North", and "History of the Mind" and other novels have similar characteristics. Obviously, if the author is too strong, or the subjectivity is too prominent, it will produce a novel with a strong lyrical temperament.

Bi Feiyu | "Corn"

Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House| 2005

There is also a kind of "non-polyphonic narrative", which can also be called a monotonal narrative, and Bi Feiyu's creation is very typical. He was almost a "writer who could not be repeated in words", and after reading his work and closing the book, his voice would appear and he would be gushing; but it would be difficult for you to repeat his story. So I think he's a "novelist of linguistic ontology." All his charm is in the bloom and flickering of language, the flashing narrative tone, the poetic bloom of narrative language, without these things, the story itself is gone. For example, you can try to recount what story "Corn" wrote, can you tell it? It seems that there can only be one approximation. The story of this novel is written like a flower, the characters are alive and jumping on the paper, and it is also obviously narrated from two different perspectives, Two Characters, Wang Lianfang of zhishu and her daughter Corn, but there is a consistent tone that captures the whole story. Even the protagonists Yuxiu and Yuyang are integrated into the voice of this narrative, as if they are their own voices, but listening closely is still the voice of the author.

"Drilling into the heart of the characters" is a typical feature of Bi Feiyu's narrative. The characters and the author agree, and when they are integrated, this situation will arise. Let me give you the example of "Corn", in which it is written that Wang Lianfang, the secretary of the village party committee, "flipped over the car", because he was picking flowers and weeds everywhere, he finally subverted his authority and was dismissed because he "sabotaged military marriages". After his dismissal, he was calculating how to survive, both to save face and to try to make ends meet:

The appropriate way to do this is to learn a craft quickly. Wang Lianfang has done very careful thinking, he often holds a cigarette in one hand, crosses his waist in the other, stands in front of the "World Map" and the "Map of the People's Republic of China", puts together the hoop cooper, pig killer, shoemaker, smith, smith, blacksmith, coppersmith, tinsmith, carpenter, bricklayer, synthesis, comparison, analysis, and research, and after stripping the essence, removing the false and storing the truth, from the inside out, from the phenomenon to the essence, and then in connection with the reality of his body, age, energy, prestige, etc., he decides to become a lacquer craftsman. The lacquer maker has several advantages: first, it is not too laborious, and he can still eat and consume; second, the technology is not too difficult, as long as the big red green space is smeared, do not expose the wood, it is difficult after all; third, the cost is low, it is a brush, unlike the carpenter, sawing, planing, axe, chisel, hammer, a set of dozens of pieces; fourth, learn the craft, all day outside to make a living, do not have to stay in Wangjiazhuang, the eyes are not pure, the mood is easy to deal with; fifth, the painter is always decent, like his identity, Doing such a dirty thing as killing pigs, the people will also be chilled when they see it, and the lacquer painters are different in the end, a brush is red, a brush is green, and it looks very much like engaging in propaganda work from a distance. After the decision was made, Wang Lianfang felt that his policy was still relatively close to materialism.

In fact, there seem to be two voices in this passage, one is The Fallen Peasant Wang Lianfang, and the other is Wang Lianfang, who adheres to the identity of "cadre", but Bi Feiyu effectively pinches the two Wang Lianfang together and deliberately amplifies his "cadre discourse" to generate a dramatic and ironic effect.

However, if we compare the narrative of corn again, we will find that the work is actually close to a uniform tone:

Corn walked over to the big mirror and startled herself. When have you ever been so foreign and beautiful? Most of the girls in the countryside have carried heavy burdens, pressed for a long time, and their backs will be a little bent, with their breasts, and the pelvic bones are particularly awkward. Corn is different, her body is very straight, and full, a good dress will naturally be extra straight, the body and fabric are nestled with each other, a considerate and humble and mutual help. How can it be said that people rely on clothes and horses to rely on saddles? The most thrilling one was still in the chest, convex and convex, concave and concave, more undulating than not wearing clothes, standing there, as if feeding the members of the whole village.

Obviously, there is a powerful narrator who covers Wang Lianfang and Corn, as well as other characters, who knows everything and can do everything, and sneaks into the hearts of every character, and this narrator is Bi Feiyu, who uses his narrative language to unify the rivers and lakes and achieve his unique narrative rules and order.

Wang Anyi is also this kind of "writer with a narrative tone", and the characters in her novels are mostly self-analysts controlled by the narrator, advancing the narrative of the novel in this controlled analysis, so all narrative language is the language of the writer. Many southern writers, especially those in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, are of this type, probably because their tone of discourse is too charming, which in turn controls the writer himself.

Some writers will like to insert "lyrical ink" in the novel at the right time, and the typical example of this is Ge Fei. In his "Gangnam Trilogy", such poetic and lyrical passages are often inserted. For example, the love between Tan Gongda and Yao Peipei in "Mountains and Rivers into Dreams", their letters in the heroine's escape, are like a deliberately embedded brilliant chapter. Strictly speaking, this paragraph almost leaves the inherent logic of the novel, because the "sudden sublimation" of the character's personality needs a foundation, and whether it is Tan Gongda and Yao Peipei, or Tan Duanwu and Pang Jiayu in "Spring in jiangnan", their original relationship lacks a pure spiritual love foundation, Yao Peipei is a girl with charm and temperament, and suddenly has a saint-like spirituality and thought; Pang Jiayu even had a slightly reluctant extramarital affair when he traveled to Beijing at the beginning of the novel. After that, there has always been a rather sharp conflict with Tan Duanwu, how did she suddenly become a noble saint and love Tan Duanwu to death? But Ge Fei has such an ability, he takes such a lyrical pen as the climax of the whole book, can be very cleverly embedded into the narrative, and achieve seamless. But this is a special case, you know, Ge Fei is a high-level music enthusiast, and his cultivation and understanding in music have helped him. But for the average person, this situation is more dangerous.

Ge Fei | "Jiangnan Trilogy"

Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House | 2019

There is also a kind of "imagery novel". There may not seem to be much imagery novel now, but it used to be a lot in the nineties. For example, Su Tong's novels, Wang Gan's earliest review of Su Tong is called "Su Tong Imagery", and there are many novels that are almost Imagist poetry, or Impressionist paintings. For example, there is a "Scarecrow", the story is difficult to repeat, like a prose poem, about a violent game between several children. There was a child named Rong, who drove a sheep to the field at noon in the summer, and saw a scarecrow erected in the cotton field, and he moved the scarecrow down, and out of the child's prank, he also dismantled it - which was equivalent to him "killing a man". When he took down one of the scarecrow's cogwheels and used it as a toy to grind it by the river, there were two swimming boys downstream from the river, and the two brothers saw a wooden stick floating upstream, which was the backbone of the scarecrow's body. After the two of them fished out the stick, they began to chat, and one of them said, Do you know, there was a murder in the cotton field not long ago, and one person knocked another person with a stick and beat him to death. You can see that there seems to be blood on it. Then the two men walked upstream with wooden sticks, just in time to see Rong grinding gears by the river, so they went to fight with Rong, and one of them hit the back of Rong's head with a wooden stick, as if to beat him to death. But at the end of the novel, it is said that at noon in the summer, the field is quiet, nothing happens, and soon after, a scarecrow is erected in the field.

It is exactly like a dream, the logic of a child's imagination. Children's logic superimposes what happens in different time and space to create a causal connection full of confusion. Because the memory framework of childhood has not yet been fully established, and the "self" consciousness is still in a weak state, there will be many free associations, just like narrating dreams, naturally inventing certain causal relationships, and thus producing a sense of trance flickering dislocation and confusion. "Scarecrow" is to present the absurdity, hypotheticality, jumping and illogicity of childhood memories and thinking in the form of imagery, in short, the attributes of dreams. Su Tong's similar novels include "Running Wild", "Hello, Beekeeper" and so on, including "Wives and Concubines In Groups" and other masterpieces also have very dense image descriptions. This is a major feature of his novels.

The image novel is of course lyrical, and its dramatic meaning is covered by the poetic extension and divergence of the image, which is less important. But the "poetry" mentioned here is not simply in the sense of beauty, but refers to the lyricism in a broad sense, and the novels of Residual Snow also belong to this category, her works are all showing "non-historical scenes", scenes in the unconscious world, not so "beautiful", but it seems very cruel and gray, but this also belongs to the broad sense of "modern poetry".

Writer Wide Angle | Zhang Qinghua: The Problem of Drama and Lyricism: The Two Dimensions of Novel Narrative

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