Shen Congwen
沈從文 Shen Congwen (December 28th 1902 - May 10th 1988) is a Chinese writer of the modern period. Independent writer, his novels and news make known its native province of the Hunan and in particular the national minorities which live there.
Its life
Shen Congwen was born in 1902 in Fenghuang, in the province of Hunan, an inhabited area by many minorities. In fact, his/her mother belonged to the Tujia ethnos group and her paternal grandmother with the Miao ethnos group. Its true name is Shen Yuehuan. Its pen name " Congwen" mean " that which is devoted to the lettres". It supplemented by many readings the summary teaching which it accepted at the local school.Resulting from a military family of tradition, it returned in 1918 in the local militia of Chen Quzhen, the lord of war which dominated this part of China, becoming even its personal secretary. It transcribed confessions of prisoners and attended many executions and meetings of torture. This direct experiment of the hardness of the local militia and the beauty of the Chinese rural world is reflected in its work.
In 1922, it goes to Beijing in the intention to study at the University but does not pass the examination of entry. It starts to write in literary reviews, publishing in 1925 its first account in the Supplément of the morning News , published by the famous writer Xu Zhimo. Its works reflect the rural life in the area of Xiangxi in a style very different from the cosmopolitanism which characterizes the other writers of its generation. In Beijing, it becomes acquainted with other writers like Yu Dafu and the famous intellectual Hu Shih. It is at that time that it also meets the couple of writers formed by Ding Ling and his/her husband Hu Yepin with whom it will share housing.
In 1927, the three young writers go to Shanghai. There, Shen Congwen manages to obtain a post of professor in spite of its academic lack of training thanks to the mediation of Hu Shih. It enters the literary Company of the half moon and continues a prolific activity of writer. In 1928, it publishes in a literary review the Newspaper of voyage of Alice in China , a satirical work which ridicules the taste of certain Chinese for the foreigner. In this work, Shen Congwen expresses its rooting in the Chinese culture what distinguishes it from other important authors of its time influenced by the foreigner. In 1929, it leaves Ding Ling and Hu Yepin which will settle in Jinan. It remains in Shanghai until 1930 then accepts a post of professor of literature at the university of Wuhan. Thereafter, it also gives courses to Beijing and Qingdao.
In 1934, it publishes its most famous work, the frontier City , one of the most important works of the Chinese literature of the XXe century, which tells the sexual awakening of a teenager of rural China.
During the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), it resides at Kunming. In 1943, it publishes another of its famous works, the Large River . He denounces the censure, the arbitrary arrests, the worship of the " héros" without adhering for as much to the League of the writers of left.
After the war against the Japanese, it settles in Beijing where it gives courses to the University. In 1948, it publishes its Autobiographie of Shen Congwen . In 1949, its lack of political commitment exposes it to criticisms of the writers members of the Chinese Communist party, like Guo Moruo, which reproaches him its ideological tepidity and show it to make obstacle with the Revolution. After having tried to commit suicide Chen Congwen remains in Beijing. The Communist regime of the Popular republic of China condemns her works as being pornographic. It gives up its literary activity then.
From 1950, he works with the museum of history of China and devotes himself with passion to archeology. In 1967, during the cuturelle Revolution, one sends it to work in the countryside. He is rehabilitated like many other writers in 1978 after the come to power of Deng Xiaoping. Of return to Beijing, he works with the Academy of Social sciences. He dies in Beijing in 1988.
During the last years of its life, its work started to be recognized in its own country. It was thus named twice like candidate with the Nobel Prize of literature.
Its work
Isabelle Rabut, her translator, carries, in the postface of the Passeur of Chadong , the judgment following on her art:
" Its register, singularly broad, will draw as well from rough materials of the memory as in the legends or the Buddhist apologues of inspiration. But from these attempts an authentic vision of writer emerges, to which the label of " literature of terroir" , that one often affixed with his texts, returns justice well little: if Xiangxi is certainly essential like the key character of its work, at the point to sometimes scramble the limits between monograph and fiction, Shen Congwen the pupil little by little with the height of a myth towards which all its reflections converge on the logic of the lived and dreamed life: a kind of diagram of the human condition, seized in its natural energy, whose appears very with tower the tender face or brutale."
List works
Shen Congwen produced an abundant work: more than 500 titles covering all the literary kinds but where the news occupies the greatest part.-
'' water and the clouds ''
- Ducks - new, 1926
- Oranges - new, 1927
- Adventures of Alice in China , volume 1 - according to Lewis Carroll, 1928
- Xiao-Xiao - new, 1929
- adventures of Alice in China , volume 2,1931
- the marble boat - collection of news, 1931
- the frontier City (Biānchéng), 1934
- Memories of Ding Ling , volume 1 - biographical test, 1934
- Memories of Ding Ling , volume 2 - biographical test, 1940
- Under night protection - new, 1947
- Journée shone upon after snowfall - Romance, 1947
- the Large River - fragment of novel, 1943
- Autobiographie of Shen Congwen , 1948
- Phoenix and Dragon in art , 1960
- Vêtements and Ornaments of traditional China , 1981
Works translated into French
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New , Collection Panda, Beijing, 1982
- the Frontier runner of Chadong (Biānchéng), translated by Isabelle Rabut, Albin Michel (1990), 10-18 (1995)
- the Small Soldier of Hunan , autobiography translated by Isabelle Rabut, Albin Michel (1992)
- water and clouds: how I create my stories and how my stories create me , translates by Isabelle Rabut, Bleu of China (1999)
Critical bibliography
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With the memory of a friend, Pa Kin, translated by Isabelle Rabut, Thousand and One Nights, 1995.