MCLC: notes on Shen Congwen event

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Magnus Fiskesjo <magnus.fiskesjo at cornell.edu>
Subject: notes on Shen Congwen event
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Shanghai, 13 august 2014: Notes on “Shen Congwen’s life: The second half”

There was an interesting public event and discussion today at the Shanghai
Library, as part of its summer series of public talks on new books on
literature.

Zhang Xinyi, author of the new book _Sheng Congwen de houban sheng,
1948-1988_ [“Shen Congwen’s life: The second half, 1948-1988,” Nanning:
Guangxi shifan daxue, 2014; 59 yuan, ISBN, 978-7-5495-5401-0], together
with his former teacher and current colleague at Fudan university,
literature professor Chen Sihe, discussed Shen Congwen's life and times in
front of a full house in Shanghai Library’s main lecture hall.

Zhang started his comments by relecting on the drawings by Shen Congwen
that he reprinted among the front matter of his book, as well as on its
cover: A series of hand drawings made from the tenth floor window of the
Shanghai Mansions, on May 1, 1957, where Shen Congwen was staying while
visiting Shanghai. Below on the street, already at 530am, Labor Day
demonstrations were beginning, but what caught Shen Congwen’s eye was the
little boats drifting in the Huangpu river, with people sleeping and
fishing(!), oblivious to the massive amounts of people marching on the
riverfront streets and bridges below.

Shen Congwen kept drawing this scene and contrast again and again with
half-hour intervals, intentionally electing to attend to the parallel
universe of the fisherman and his boat adrift in the river. This, Zhang
argued, is an illustration of the author’s way of carving out his own
path, away from the mainstream, -- in his pre-1949 literary writing of
fiction as well as in his post-1949 life, when he put an end to his
writing of fiction (unlike some of his writer colleagues in the same
generation, -- who were of course diminished as a result of their choice,
though that was left unsaid), and instead created a new career for himself
in museum work and research on museum objects. Zhang’s book discusses how
Shen Congwen’s collecting of clothing, basketry, things like fans, and so
on, actually had started much earlier and was already part and parcel of
who he had always been. (That is to say, he was something of his own
determined eccentric -- like Benjamin forever unpacking his books; or like
one of those No Name painters who secretly painted stillebens of small
scenes that mattered to them -- instead of, and away from, the Mao-cultic
propaganda-poster style of the day).

Professor Chen Sihe alternated talking with his former pupil, professor
Zhang, from their two sofas on the podium. Chen, for his part, expanded on
how Shen Congwen’s post-1949 researcher and museum career should not be
understood as a retreat and a failure, but as a reinvention that brought
him genuine joy. Indeed, the frontispiece photo in the book, of Shen
Congwen as a museum exhibit docent at the historical museum in Beijing in
1959, shows a man who does look genuinely happy and at peace (but perhaps
this is just the inner light of Shen Congwen’s “energy”, as professor Chen
put it, which shines through?); and as professor Chen also mentioned, he
continued publishing works on the history of clothing and such topics all
the while his former writer colleagues’ conformist post-1949 works were
being torn up as rightist and bourgeois. It was a successful reinvention
of himself, which was actually founded on, and true to, who he was before
and had always been.

Chen also pointed out the parallel between Shen Congwen’s eye for the
little boat on the river, and his ability to focus on the marvel of things
like basketry and clothing, even though this was often a source of
ridicule of the scholars and museum officers at the time, who would rather
spend their days handling ancient bronzes and such prestige items. In that
context Chen also told the hilarious story of a professor of classical
Chinese philosophy evacuated from Peking during WWII alongside Shen
Congwen (the writer, and literature professor), and who unceremoniously
told him it would be a loss for the country if he, the exalted
philosopher, was blown up by an enemy bomb, but someone like Shen Congwen,
who focused on small things, would not be such a loss.

Chen spoke quite passionately (and, interestingly, for me as an
anthropologist) about how actually, unbeknownst to many Han Chinese,
minority people like the Miao (a people that represented part of Shen
Congwen’s ancestry) have long seen their clothing and adornment as deeply
meaningful, and prestigious, and Shen Congwen understood this -- and so,
he sought to hold it up, as something valuable.

The rest of Zhang’s book sifts through the tribulations Shen Congwen met
with through the Mao years, while carving out his own way to upholding his
dignity.  Much of it draws on the letters that Shen Congwen left behind:
When he saw that fiction was no longer possible, he turned to other work
but he actually also kept writing -- mainly letters to his wife and
others, which have been preserved and which may represent (if I understand
correctly) as much as than half of his collected works. Zheng's book which
I bought after the event, to a large extent consists of a re-reading of
many of these letters as a source of a narrative of who the writer became
in this last half of his life.

Questions from the audience include such hot potatoes as, “How did Shen
Congwen deal with the barrage of unfair criticism leveled at him, such as,
from some of his former writer colleagues?” . . . “How did Shen Congwen
overcome the depressions that almost drove him to suicide,” . . . and “In
the light of Shen Congwen’s experiences, --What should the relation be, of
Chinese intellectuals, to ‘politics’”? Professor Zhang responded somewhat
diplomatically and explained that he intentionally left out the topic of
the vicious criticisms launched against Shen Congwen from the book,
because, he felt, such a topic would obscure the more interesting things
-- again, how Shen Congwen saved himself by reinventing himself as a
researcher, collector, curator and writer on his research topics of
clothing, and such matters. I can see some justification in such a move:
As the speakers emphasized, by ending his own fiction writing, Shen
Congwen was also able to avoid the fate of his friend Ba Jin, who chose to
continue to write under the new regime of censorship, and thus creating a
new body of work which, no matter the strident effort to be politically
correct, became a new target for political campaigns against him during
the “cultural revolution.” Still, afterwards, some of the people in the
audience -- who cornered me outside, curious about seeing a European face
in this huge, all-Chinese crowd of Shen Congwen fans -- instead said the
speaker had avoided answering these questions more straightforwardly
because they were too hot to deal with “for a university professor.”

Today’s event, which I stumbled into by accident when visiting the
library, brought back old memories. In the Spring of 1988, while serving
as cultural attache in Sweden’s embassy in Peking, some Swedish writers
planning to visit Peking had contacted me to set up a meeting with the
elderly Shen Congwen, which I did with some anticipation. I eagerly
awaited the Swedish writers’ arrival and hoped they had been reading the
translations of Shen Congwen’s fiction that Nils-Olof Ericsson, Stig
Hansén, myself and others had been publishing in Sweden during the 1980s.
Perhaps the writers were part of a movement to propose him for the Nobel
Prize. I wish that had happened -- that would have been a dignified
choice, and I think most deserved, since his pre-1949 literary writings
distinguish him as the creator of a personal style that he had carved out
for himself. However, Shen Congwen died that same Spring, just two weeks
before we could meet him.

It sure was a strange coincidence to encounter him again so many years
after: through this packed book event at the library, through this
worthwhile new book, and through the intriguing drawings by Shen Congwen
that illustrate it.

Magnus Fiskesjö

ps. The library’s book events are being held under the intriguing slogan
“Wang lai wu su diao; ci di you qing yin” (Nothing petty [“su”] as you
visit here -- In this spot, there’s a cool/clear shadow [“qing yin”] --
the word “qing” undoubtedly also chosen to mean “clarifying”).