Shen Congwen's Last 40 Years

Author: Li Yang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: Border Town, Mountain City, Green Silk Dress, Xiao Cui's Clear Song Everywhere Heard, I Argue About Literature with Respect to May Fourth, Until Now, My Heart is Touched by Shen Congwen. For 40 years, he has always called himself a "person out of date." For 40 years, he has been away from the literary world, wandering between vessels and ancient costumes. However, one day, standing on the river ferry, he suddenly saw the living image of "Border Town" — carrying me with form, toiling me with life, freeing me with age, and resting me with death. The silent years of the Border Town wanderer are a rare work of 20th-century China, blooming with the ultimate beauty of the phoenix in solitude and oblivion.
● To reflect on me is to understand "I"; to reflect on me is to recognize "humanity."
● As one nears middle age, emotions solidify, or perhaps due to an introverted nature and lack of social skills, one's writing style, whether over 20 or 30 years, always starts from a single "thought." Yet now, one must begin with "faith," which is not easy to reverse. Soon enough, whether forced to lay down the pen or not, one will eventually put the pen down.
● How did I suddenly become such a person? The past me seems completely dead. The reborn me is very weak. I just want to cry. I feel isolated from everything, yet in reality, I am intertwined with the joys and sorrows of many people of an era. I seem to have awakened or been reborn.
● Ma Yuoran, member of the Swedish Academy and judge of the Nobel Prize in Literature; his value lies in the fact that no Chinese writer, including Lu Xun, can match him. Shen Congwen is the greatest writer of the 20th century. The more I know about his greatness, the sadder I become about his lifelong solitude. Melancholy is useless; pessimism is a dead end; optimism and positivity are what we truly need. Reflection implies optimism, and inner archaeology signifies positivity. Without such qualities, reflection and inner archaeology will both fail. The authors of this series express their positivity and optimism from different perspectives. They strive to present the faint traces of the 20th century before us and place certain corners of the past China before our eyes. Because their purpose is to point toward today and the future, their concerns are no longer mere worries but have merged with a special form of optimism. In this series, worries are worries of optimism, and optimism is optimism tinged with worries. Thus, this series effectively suppresses affectation to the greatest extent and kicks any kind of complaint out the door. In a sense, this series perfectly continues, advances, and elaborates on the finest tradition of 20th-century Chinese intellectuals. May we share this encouragement with all readers.