Liang Xiaosheng: Literature is the foundation of life
In the past few months, the novel "The World" has become the "theme" of Liang Xiaosheng's life.
The TV series of the same name adapted accordingly has "harvested" several generations of audiences, old, middle and young, and brought this work, which has already won the Mao Dun Literature Award, and the writer himself to the foreground once again.
He was grateful for everyone's recognition of his work, and was a little tired from the influx of interviews and activities.
Before the interview, Liang Xiaosheng had something to say: "I have talked a lot about "The World", so I won't talk about it anymore. I hope everyone will read my new novel "Chinese Peach and Plum"."
In fact, since the publication of "The World" at the end of 2017, Liang Xiaosheng has maintained a high-productivity writing state, and has successively created two novels, one is "Me and My Life" published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 2020, One is "Chinese Taoli" published by Writers Publishing House not long ago. Both focus on the growth of "post-80s" youth, and write a generation's "Song of Youth" from the perspective of young people.
Especially the new work "Chinese Peach and Li" is regarded by Liang Xiaosheng as his penultimate novel.
He said: "Writing is not much different from a pastry chef opening a noodle shop. I still have a novel that I am writing. After I finish writing, no matter how good the level is, the Liangji noodle shop will close. I still have another novel in my tank. The dough, this dough cannot be wasted."
Write to the Chinese Department "Post-80s"
In 2002, Liang Xiaosheng was appointed as a professor at the School of Humanities of Beijing Language and Culture University, and had direct and frequent contact with young students.
At that time, his students were the "post-80s" generation.
Over the years, he has paid attention to the life experiences of the students after they left the campus, and wanted to leave a little record of his teaching career through novels, and also give it as a gift to the students he has taught.
From a first-person perspective, "Chinese Peach and Li" tells the story of Li Xiaodong after he was admitted to the Department of Chinese at the University of Arts and Sciences at the turn of the century.
He listened to Professor Wang Ersen's class with the boys in his class, and gained literary enlightenment; he ran the magazine "Art and Science" for a while, and his published works were reprinted by "Reader"; he met Xu Ran, a girl of various colors, and tasted the tangle and sweetness of love for the first time; The pressure of further studies and employment, and exploring the way forward... In this university, young students represented by Li Xiaodong and Xu Ran experienced contradictions, conflicts and misunderstandings among their classmates, and after being tested by the SARS epidemic in 2003, they gained Growth, friendship and love.
They took four years of Chinese education and entered the second half of the novel.
"Chinese Peach and Plum" is a work written for the Chinese Department.
"In the 1980s, Chinese was a very popular major. Talents and talented girls were all in the Chinese department. If a school didn't have a Chinese department, how could it be?" Liang Xiaosheng said: "Later, literature began to be marginalized, and it became a book When the protagonists of the novel started to learn Chinese, the Chinese department seemed to be a 'basket' - in the past, I only read Chinese because I liked Chinese, but now it may be a stopgap measure, and I have no choice but to study because of the unsatisfactory results in science." But in his opinion The humanities education students receive in the Chinese Department will not make them rich and successful in a short period of time, but it has cultivated their professional ability and reading ability.
For example, Li Xiaodong in the novel, because he was the editor-in-chief of "Art and Science", in the future several jobs in provincial TV stations, publishing houses, advertising companies, real estate companies, and documentary teams, often made good results, so that his wife Xu Ran many years later. The son said, "Your father's life is still at the bottom of the rice bowl of literature."
Compared with "The World", "Chinese Peach and Plum" does not feel so worrisome and heavy.
There are many "little humors" and online slang words that are close to the younger generation, such as "formula (pronounced duǐ, refers to contradicting)", "Buddhism", "Yanzhi" and so on.
"Writing about the younger generation is a challenge for me. First of all, the language is different, especially the emergence of online buzzwords. Therefore, I try to integrate into the young people in terms of language." Liang Xiaosheng said, "There must be a generation gap. Going to young people, I mingle with them every day, and the generation gap is still there. You are on the other side of the gap, and I am on the other side of the gap, and we can still communicate intimately.”
If it is said that contemporaries have their own advantages in writing contemporaries, then Liang Xiaosheng, who is a peer of the Republic, writes "post-80s", which has more "aesthetic distance".
"The writers in the late 1970s and '80s are more or less stubborn when they write about their contemporaries. They don't seem to write like that. I think this is a bit labelled. The students I contact are not like this. I prefer my own writing. These 'post-80s' are also joking and humorous, but they don't have the feeling of being stubborn."
Live a "Reporteristic" Life
What is an ideal life is always a problem that plagues young people.
In "Chinese Taoli", the heroine Xu Ran asked Li Xiaodong: "Life can also be divided into songs, poems, novels, prose, reportage, and epics. What kind of life do you look forward to? ?" The two discussed it and felt that no one's life can be like a song all the time, that epics are too far away from ordinary people, poets are too idealistic and detached from reality, novels are too difficult to control and too complicated, and Prose is more suitable for the elderly, or reportage is more appropriate - life is like a report to yourself, you can't make up, deceive yourself, and have a bit of literature, add the flavor of novels, prose, and poetry.
This practice of using literary categories as a metaphor for life is the creation of Liang Xiaosheng.
He said: "This is the view of people who have come here. I have never experienced a life like poetry, and I didn't dare to think about it at all. Since I was a teenager, I was sure that this life must be as realistic as reportage, without the slightest romance and abstraction. , hypocrisy - because of difficulties at home."
In the second half of the novel, after the two protagonists graduated and entered the society, as they said, they kept a "consciousness of responsibility" for each other in their hearts and worked hard for their lives seriously.
They lived in a humble bungalow, a dim basement, overcame all kinds of unexpected difficulties, encountered all kinds of characters, and finally lived a happy life.
And Li Xiaodong and Xu Ran finally obtained the approval of their parents and achieved a happy marriage.
Looking at the paths these two characters have traveled, they indeed represent the mental journey of many "post-80s" youths.
They have struggled, whether to stay in their hometown to accompany their parents, or travel far away to a big city; they face the pressure of living, such as household registration, rent, wages, etc., but they are not willing to do jobs that go against their nature; They are ashamed of taking advantage of their friends; in the face of unavoidable intergenerational conflicts, they have escaped and quarreled, and finally understood their parents and gained family affection.
"Chinese Peach and Li" can be called the spiritual history of the "post-80s" young generation. The writer wrote the choice of life path and the attitude towards emotion of this generation with a serious attitude.
In Liang Xiaosheng's view, novelists cannot only see novels, novels should respond to various social problems.
He defines writers as recorders of the times, and believes that outstanding writers in the history of literature, such as Tolstoy, Hugo, Dickens, Turgenev, are both writers and intellectuals, and they all care about the fate of others.
A social hot topic touched by "Chinese Taoli" is whether young people want to stay in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
The writer described young "beijing drifters" such as Li Xiaodong and Xu Ran as "diamonds", and used the protagonist's mouth to divide Beijing into a "motor car-like" Beijing and a "green leather car-like" Beijing during the Chinese New Year.
Li Xiaodong felt that the former Beijing with "North Drift" was more lovely, but he finally chose to return to his hometown and joined a like-minded documentary filming team.
"There are three levels of Lingquan, provincial capital and Beijing in the novel, and I don't want to give a conclusion about where the protagonist is right or wrong. What I want to point out is that this choice is a kind of pros and cons, a trade-off. It has nothing to do with right or wrong." Liang Xiaosheng said.
"Chinese Peach and Plum" continues Liang Xiaosheng's thinking on "what kind of life is worth living" in his previous works, but the object of his observation has changed from "post-50s" in "The World" to "post-80s".
But his answer has not changed - "After more than 70 years of life, what should one pursue in life? After thinking about it, except for the truth, goodness and beauty, everything else is fleeting."
University needs humanistic atmosphere
"The peaches and plums do not speak, and they form their own footsteps." From the name of "Chinese Peach and Plum", it can be seen that this is also a book of university education.
There is an impressive character in the book - Wang Ersen, a professor of Chinese.
His class is full of fun and interesting, and students who want to cross majors to Chinese as a foreign language are also deeply attracted; he encourages students to run publications and recommend excellent works for publication; he makes friends with students, so that everyone will miss them many years after graduation... More important What's more, he is a veritable "spiritual mentor" for students, guiding students to think about human nature and the meaning of life.
What is the significance of "The Little Match Girl" to the progress of human society?
Teacher Wang said that after reading it, the seeds of sympathy will germinate in my heart.
Then read "The Happy Prince", "Tess" and "Les Miserables", "Then, if he becomes a sheriff, he may not be Javert; Homeless boys and girls who sell flowers are cared for instead of freezing to death."
What is "deep"?
Mr. Wang said that it is like a diamond in a Swiss watch, "A diamond is a thought-provoking plot, an impressive detail, an unforgettable text or dialogue... Profound does not mean alarmist or grandstanding. , let alone a blind exhibition of the ugliness and evil of human nature.”
As the saying goes, "literature is the study of man", so what is "man"?
Teacher Wang said that people are the host of desire and the cradle of reason; people are the vessel of culture and the sum of social relations; people have a sense of responsibility and a sense of mission, people’s curiosity gives birth to science, and people’s thirst for entertainment gives birth to literature and art…
In fact, Wang Ersen is a self-portrait of Liang Xiaosheng. In the book, what Teacher Wang talks about is Liang's literature class that students have to listen to when they crowd the classroom.
"It is not enough for the teachers of the Chinese department to only teach how to read and understand a novel. They should start from the works more, and make students think about life. For example, I discussed with the students who "The Little Match Girl" was written for, What are the similarities between "The Daughter of the Sea" in "Andersen's Fairy Tales" and "Wang Liulang" in "Strange Tales from a Liaozhai", and what enlightenment does Rodin's sculpture "The Centaurs" give us to understand human nature? These ideological topics and their extension Discussion is the most valuable." Liang Xiaosheng said: "I don't think lectures have to be as popular as a talk show. It seems that this is not the case. A class is only 45 minutes long, and students have to pay tuition."
He also found that the boys in the class were more introverted and reluctant to speak up, resulting in the voices of the discussions being heard from the same gender.
"This is a pity for the discussion itself. We often say that there must be different voices and viewpoints, including gender - how men see it and how women see it. This collision is very meaningful." Liang Xiaosheng said.
Students who have taken Liang Xiaosheng's class know that although the issues discussed in the class are serious, the atmosphere is relaxed and active.
He once took the students to watch the movie "Taxi Driver", and paid for the students to buy drinks, bread, and candy, and let them eat while lying on the table.
"I think this is the right way to teach literature classes," Liang Xiaosheng said.
In the novel, Liang Xiaosheng used Mr. Wang to express his adherence to the humanistic spirit of the university: "What kind of major is the literature major? First of all, it is a major that understands human nature and then understands itself. Our major is actually the soul of the university. A university without a humanistic atmosphere cannot be a good university..."
His emphasis on the humanistic atmosphere is actually a belief, believing that "literature has indeed played such a trivial role in promoting social progress, and has influenced the people of the world little by little, for a hundred years and a hundred years."
It is also in this sense that literature is the foundation of life.
Our reporter Zhang Pengyu