刘震云:写作不是一个作者不断思索的结果

来源:中国文化译研网

作者: 罗雨静

2018-10-23

  刘震云,男,1958年5月生于河南新乡延津县。1973年入伍,1982年毕业于北京大学中文系,1991年毕业于北京师范大学鲁迅文学院研究生班。历任《农民日报》记者、文化部主任,中国作协第五、六、七届全委会委员。1982年开始发表作品,1990年加入中国作家协会。文学创作一级。著有长篇小说《故乡天下黄花》《故乡相处流传》《故乡面和花朵》(四卷)等,中短篇小说集《塔铺》《一地鸡毛》《官场》《官人》《刘震云文集》(四卷),中篇小说《新闻》《新兵连》《单位》《温故一九四二》等。《塔铺》获全国优秀短篇小说奖、《小说选刊》优秀短篇奖,《一句顶一万句》获第八届茅盾文学奖。2018年获得法国文学艺术勋章骑士勋位。多部作品被改编为影视剧,获得多种奖项的同时于海内外产生了广泛的影响。

  刘震云以描写城市社会的“单位系列”和干部生活的“官场系列”的作品,在文坛引起强烈反响。他确立了创作中的平民立场,将目光集中于历史、权力和民生问题,但又不失于简洁直接的白描手法,也因此被称为“新写实主义”作家。刘震云有对“哲理深度”更明显的追求,他持续地揭发在日常生活中发生的,无处不在的“荒诞”和人的异化。

  刘震云的《塔铺》《一地鸡毛》《单位》这一系列“官场”和“单位”小说侧重关注在社会结构中人的处境。他发现了“单位”这一特殊的当代社会机制,以及这一机制对人所产生的规约。无法把握的欲望,人性的弱点,和严密的社会权力机制,在刘震云所创造的普通人生活世界中,构成难以挣脱的网。生活于其间的人物面对强大的“环境”压力,对命运有不可知的宿命感;同时又在适应这一生存环境的过程中,经历了人性的扭曲。《故乡天下黄花》是刘震云追求新的创作境界的小说,本书从民国初年北方某村的村长被勒死在土窖里的命案开始,叙写村庄里两户人家结下世代冤仇,更朝改代后仍是干戈争戮的故事。作者通过一个小小的村落,反映了古老中国半个世纪错综复杂的社会风貌,暴露出人性中愚昧和贪婪的一面。

  茅盾文学奖获奖作品《一句顶一万句》分为两部:《出延津记》与《回延津记》。上部“出延津记”讲述的是在二十世纪前期的河南农村,一个孤独无助的农民为了寻找与人私奔的老婆,在路上失去唯一能够“说得上话”的养女,为了寻找她,他不得不走出延津;下部“回延津记”记述了农民养女的儿子,同样为了寻找与人私奔的老婆,走向延津的故事。一去一来,延宕百年。上下两部分绝不是单纯地理意义上的回归,不光是象征人生的轮回,更象征着由天国到尘世的回归。


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刘震云

Liu Zhenyun

  Liu Zhenyun was born in Yanjin County, Xinxiang, Henan in May 1958. After enlisting in the military in 1973, he graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University in 1982 and graduated from the Graduate School of Lu Xun College of Literature, Beijing Normal University in 1991. He has served as a reporter for the Farmers’ Daily and director of the Ministry of Culture, and is a member of the fifth, sixth and seventh sessions of the Chinese Writers Association. He began publishing works in 1982 and joined the Chinese Writers Association in 1990. His literary creations are first class and include the novels Hometown, Regime and Blood, Anecdotes in the Hometown, Material and Spirit in the Hometown (Four Volumes) and so on, the short story collection A Small Town: Tapu, Ground Covered with Chicken Feathers, Corridors of Power, Official, Liu Zhenyun Collection (Four volumes), the novellas News, Recruits, The Office, Remembering 1942 and so on. A Small Town: Tapu won the National Outstanding Short Story Award, Fiction Selection won the excellent short story award, Someone to Talk To won the eighth Mao Dun Literature Award. In 2018 he received the knighthood of the Order of French Arts and Culture. A number of his works have been adapted into film and television dramas, which have won a wide variety of awards and have had a wide range of influence at home and abroad.

  Liu Zhenyun’s works, which describe the “working series” of urban society and the “officialdom series” of cadres’ lives, have aroused strong reactions in the literary world. He has established the civilian stance in his writing and focuses his attention on history, power, and people’s livelihoods. However, he still writes in a concise and straightforward manner, and has therefore became known as the “new realism” writer. Liu Zhenyun has a more obvious pursuit of “philosophical depth”. He continues to expose the ubiquitous “absurdity” and alienation that occur in everyday life.

  Liu Zhenyun’s “officialdom” and “working” series of novels (A Small Town: Tapu, Ground Covered with Chicken Feathers, and The Office) focus their attention on the situations of people in the social structure. He has discovered the special contemporary social mechanism of The Office and the conventions produced by this mechanism. An ungraspable desire, the weakness of human nature, and the strict social power mechanism constitute a net that is difficult to escape from in the world of ordinary people created by Liu Zhenyun. The people living in this environment face powerful “environmental” pressures and have an unknowable sense of destiny when it comes to their fate; at the same time, they have experienced human distortions in the process of adapting to this living environment.

  Hometown, Regime and Blood is a novel in which Liu Zhenyun pursues a new creative realm. This book begins with the strangulation and murder of a village head in the crypt of a village in the north of the early Republic of China era. The story moves on to two families in the village settling a generations-old grudge, after quarreling through changes in dynasties over many years. Through a small village, the author reflects the intricate social features of ancient China for half a century and exposes an ignorant and greedy side of human nature. Someone to Talk To, which won the Mao Dun Literary Award, is divided into two parts: Leaving Yanjin andReturning to Yanjin.

  The first part Leaving Yanjin is about a rural village in Henan Province in the early 20th century. A lonely, helpless peasant loses his foster daughter, the only one able to speak, on the road in his search for his wife, who has run off with someone. To find her, he has to walk out of Yanjin. In the second part, Returning to Yanjin, is about the son of the peasant’s foster daughter, who was also trying to find his wife, who has run away with someone else, by travelling to Yanjin. With one going and one returning, the delay lasts one hundred years. The first and second parts are definitely not merely returns in the geographical sense. They not only symbolize the cycle of life, but also the return from heaven to the earthly world.


责任编辑:霍娟