Chinese Writer Shen Congwen
Chinese writer Shen Congwen's (沈从文) master piece was The Border Town which like many of his other stories was inspired by the lives of the riverside dwellers of western Hunan province (湖南省).
It told of an old ferryman, his granddaughter Green Jade, and two brothers who wanted to marry her. One brother died in a whirlpool, the other went downstream, the ferryman died of old age, and Green Jade kept the ferry and continued to wait.
As John Gittings wrote: "The gentle inconclusiveness of this ending does not diminish the story's charm and sadness, with the character of Green Jade just as appealing as that of Black Jade, heroine of the famous classical novel The Dream of the Red Chamber."
Shen is compared by many of his admirers to Thomas Hardy and is regarded as China's most brilliant nativist writer.
In his gently but perfectly shaped short stories, Shen conveyed the ineradicable beauty of his native western Hunan and of its people in the midst of life which was often brutal and short.
He wrote of golden rivers and lakes, of chrysanthemum-covered hills, of prostitutes and their lovers, of foresters and ferrymen, garrison soldiers and the wild tribesmen of the hills, of bandits and executions.
His only aim, as he told his readers, was that they should "try to understand the momentary sorrows and joys of the people, a glimpse, nothing more."
Shen once said he sought to emulate Dickens whose novels he revered. "He tells me everything I want to know - he makes no attempt to explain - he only records."
But according to Gittings, Shen never moralizes like Dickens and wrote nothing longer than a 100-page novella The Border Town. He was closer to his rural subject-matter than Hardy, and "wrote without feeling the need to disguise the force of sexual attraction and physical love."
His nephew Huang Yongyu had this to say about his uncle's works. "You (will) never find a superfluity of epithets such as Beautiful! Heroic! Magnificent! Elegant! Tragic! But you sense the presence, very aptly conveyed, of these qualities."
It told of an old ferryman, his granddaughter Green Jade, and two brothers who wanted to marry her. One brother died in a whirlpool, the other went downstream, the ferryman died of old age, and Green Jade kept the ferry and continued to wait.
As John Gittings wrote: "The gentle inconclusiveness of this ending does not diminish the story's charm and sadness, with the character of Green Jade just as appealing as that of Black Jade, heroine of the famous classical novel The Dream of the Red Chamber."
Shen is compared by many of his admirers to Thomas Hardy and is regarded as China's most brilliant nativist writer.
In his gently but perfectly shaped short stories, Shen conveyed the ineradicable beauty of his native western Hunan and of its people in the midst of life which was often brutal and short.
He wrote of golden rivers and lakes, of chrysanthemum-covered hills, of prostitutes and their lovers, of foresters and ferrymen, garrison soldiers and the wild tribesmen of the hills, of bandits and executions.
His only aim, as he told his readers, was that they should "try to understand the momentary sorrows and joys of the people, a glimpse, nothing more."
Shen once said he sought to emulate Dickens whose novels he revered. "He tells me everything I want to know - he makes no attempt to explain - he only records."
But according to Gittings, Shen never moralizes like Dickens and wrote nothing longer than a 100-page novella The Border Town. He was closer to his rural subject-matter than Hardy, and "wrote without feeling the need to disguise the force of sexual attraction and physical love."
His nephew Huang Yongyu had this to say about his uncle's works. "You (will) never find a superfluity of epithets such as Beautiful! Heroic! Magnificent! Elegant! Tragic! But you sense the presence, very aptly conveyed, of these qualities."
posted by Maria Siow @ 12:03 AM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home